Saul Bellow

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.

I'm glad I haven't lived in vain.

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse.

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.

I am something of a crank about sleep, for if I get seven and a quarter hours instead of eight I feel afflicted and drag myself around, although there's nothing really wrong with me. It's just another idea. That's how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken.

I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.

Live or die but don't poison everything.

There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.

One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.

The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.

A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.

Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest, ehrlich. Don't have a loud mouth. The more you love people the more they'll mix you up. A child loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love.

Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.