Saul Bellow
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Saul Bellow (10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) Canadian-born American writer; winner of the Nobel prize in literature in 1976.
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Sourced
- I am an American, Chicago born— Chicago, that somber city— and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.
- The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
- "A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life."
- Nobel acceptance speech (1976)
- "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'."
- New York Times (21 July 1985)
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Attributed
- A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
- A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
- All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
- Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
- California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.
- Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
- Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
- Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
- I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.
- If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
- No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
- People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
- 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.
- 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.
- There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
- 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.
- 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.
- What is art but a way of seeing?
- When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
- Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
- You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
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External links
- Bio at the Nobel Prize official site
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