574 Quotes by Saul Bellow

Sometimes I wonder,” I said, “if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn’t make sure first that they can defend themselves.

But maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end. So that it shouldn’t last forever? There may be something in this. And bliss, just the opposite, is eternal? There is no time in bliss. All the clocks were thrown out of heaven.

There haven’t been civilizations without cities. But what about cities without civilizations? An inhuman thing, if possible, to have so many people together who beget nothing on one another. No, but it is not possible, and the dreary begets its own fire, and so this never happens.

But fathers are soft on daughters. Look how Dad favors Angela. He gave her ten times more. Because she reminded him of Mae West. He was always smiling at her boobs. He wasn’t aware of it. Mother and I saw it.

The real and essential question is one of our employment by other human beings and their employment by us.

More of fear than of any other thing has been created.

But privately when things got very bad I often looked into books to see whether I could find some helpful words, and one day I read, “The forgiveness of sins is perpetual and righteousness first is not required.

There’ve been times when just because I kept my mouth shut and didn’t say what I thought, I felt my strength increasing. Still, I don’t seem to know what i think till I see what i say.

If you could arrange to avoid that routine job-world, you were an intellectual or an artist. Too restless, tremorous, agitated, too mad to sit at a desk eight hours a day, you needed an institution – a higher institution.