574 Quotes by Saul Bellow

Apes in their own habitat are less sexually driven than those in captivity. It must be that captivity, boredom, breeds lustfulness.

Everybody I ever knew wanted to show in some way how he held the world together. This only comes from feeling the strain of holding yourself together, and it gets exaggerated into the whole world from the hard labor you put into it.

Did I say that the world had never had better color? I left something out of account, a limping, crippled consideration which seems to lose ground as you reach beauty and Orizaba flowers, but soon you find it has preceded you.

Nobody should be a mystery intentionally. Unintentionally is mysterious enough.

Well, what o you want?” I said. “I am the type of guy who couldn’t survive without disfigurement. Life has worked me over. It wasn’t just the war, either... I got a bad wound, you know. But the shots of life... ” I gave myself a bang on the breast. “Right here! You know what I mean, King?

But I was afraid I’d have to give up on an ideal explanation of her past life. Oh well, there didn’t have to be one necessarily.

Take the fact that people generally were full of loathing and it cost them an effort to look at one another. Mostly they wanted to be let alone. And they dug for unreality more than for treasure, unreality being last great hope because then they could doubt that what they knew about themselves was true.

It was clear that the man was no fool. But what was the use of not being a fool if you acted like this?

In any true life you must go and be exposed outside the small circle that encompasses two or three heads in the same history of love.