574 Quotes by Saul Bellow

My balance comes from instability.

What use was war without also love?

That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real.

I am a true adorer of life, and if I can’t reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.

The earth was a grave: our life was lent to it by its elements and had to be returned: a time came when the simple elements seemed to long for release from the complicated forms of life, when every element of every cell said, “Enough!” The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb. Passion for the infinite caused by the terror, by timor mortis, needed material appeasement.

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom – which is bordered on all sides by isolation – is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life’s banquet.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he’s a writer. It’s an aphrodisiac.

Some people, if they didn’t make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.

Fitness was not his cup of tea. He treated his body like a vehicle – a motorbike that he raced at top speed along the rim of the Grand Canyon.