574 Quotes by Saul Bellow

Death is going to take the boundaries away from us, that we should no more be persons. That’s what death is about. When that is what life also wants to be about, how can you feel except rebellious?

Because nobody anyhow can show what he is without a sense of exposure and shame, and can’t care while preoccupied with this but must appear better and stronger than anyone else, mad! And meantime feels no real strength in himself, cheats and gets cheated, relies on cheating but believes abnormally in the strength of the strong. All this time nothing genuine is allowed to appear and nobody knows what’s real. And that’s disfigured, degenerate, dark mankind – mere humanity. But.

He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted – must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible.

The same things are done by us, over and over, with terrible predictability. One may be forgiven, in view of this, for wishing at least to associate with beauty.

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!

When a man’s breast feels like a cage from which all the dark birds have flown – he is free, he is light. And he longs to have his vultures back again. He wants his customary struggles, his nameless, empty works, his anger, his afflictions and his sins.

Look here, because they were born you think they have to turn out to be men? That’s just an old-fashioned idea. And who tells them that? A big organization. One more big organization. A big organization makes dough or it doesn’t last. If it makes dough it’s for dough.

In the depths of a man’s being there was something that responded with a quack to such perfume. Quack!

It’s no small matter to become rich and famous by saying exactly what you think – to say it in your own words, without compromise.