574 Quotes by Saul Bellow

Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight.

Charlotte came in herself, like a big bridal edifice in her veil and other lace, carrying long-stemmed flowers. With her there wasn’t much hiding of the behind-the-scenes of life to keep a man in the bonds of love, as Lucretius advises when he tells you to make allowances for mortality. You only had to see her practical mouth to know everything about mortality was admitted in advance, though she did for form’s sake all that other women do. Her frankness gave her a kind of nobility.

Mine was the sort of heart that had to overcome melancholy and free itself from many depressing weights.

I don’t know how it all at once came to me to talk a lot, tell jokes, kick up, and suddenly have views. When it was time to have them, there was no telling how I picked them from the air.

A good novel is worth more than the best scientific study.

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

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change'the shriek of unused capacities.

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change. The shriek of unused capacities.

I think New York is not the cultural center of America, but the business and administrative center of American culture.