A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
– Saul Bellow
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
– Saul Bellow
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
– Saul Bellow
California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.
– Saul Bellow
Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
– Saul Bellow
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
– Saul Bellow
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
– Saul Bellow
I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, To hell with you.
– Saul Bellow
I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.
– Saul Bellow
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
– Saul Bellow
No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
– Saul Bellow
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
– Saul Bellow
Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
– Saul Bellow
She was what we used to call a suicide blond - dyed by her own hand.
– Saul Bellow
Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize.
– Saul Bellow
There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
– Saul Bellow
There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
– Saul Bellow
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
– Saul Bellow
Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
– Saul Bellow
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
– Saul Bellow
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
– Saul Bellow
There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.
– Saul Bellow
There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.
– Saul Bellow
What is art but a way of seeing?
– Saul Bellow
I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.