Saul Bellow Quotes Page 2

“Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.”

“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.”

“Unless you're completely exploded, there's always something to be grateful for.”

“You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.”

“Fidelity is for phonographs.”

“It seems, after all that there are no non-peculiar people.”

“She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.”

“The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”

“Being right was largely a matter of explanations.”

“Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.”

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”

“The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real — the here-and-now. Seize the day.”

“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.”

“As long as I could keep improving my mind, I figured, I was doing okay.”

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

“I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible.”

“Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.”

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”