Saul Bellow Quotes

There is today an extraordinary interest with the data of modern experience per se. Our absorption in our contemporary historical state is very high right now. It's not altogether unlike a similar situation in seventeenth century Holland where wealthy merchants wanted their portraits done with all their blemishes included. It is the height of egotism in a sense to think even one's blemishes are of significance. So today Americans seem to want their writers to reveal all their weaknesses their meannesses to celebrate their very confusions. And they want it in the most direct possible way - they want it served up neat as it were without the filtering and generalizing power of fiction.

~ 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

Our society like decadent Rome has turned into an amusement society with writers chief among the court jesters - not so much above the clatter as part of it.

~ Saul Bellow

I have always had a weakness for footnotes. For me a clever or a wicked footnote has redeemed many a text. And I see that I am now using a long footnote to open a serious subject - shifting in a quick move to Paris, to a penthouse in the Hotel Crillon. Early June. Breakfast time. The host is my good friend Professor Ravelstein, Abe Ravelstein. My wife and I, also staying at the Crillon, have a room below, on the sixth floor. She is still asleep. The entire floor below ours (this is not absolutely relevant but somehow I can't avoid mentioning it) is occupied just now by Michael Jackson and his entourage. He performs nightly in some vast Parisian auditorium. Very soon his French fans will arrive and a crowd of faces will be turned upward, shouting in unison, 'Miekell Jack-sown'. A police barrier holds the fans back. Inside, from the sixth floor, when you look down the marble stairwell you see Michael's bodyguards. One of them is doing the crossword puzzle in the 'Paris Herald'.

~ Saul Bellow

Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.

~ Saul Bellow

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

~ Saul Bellow

What is art but a way of seeing?

~ Saul Bellow