Saul Bellow

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

“What is art but a way of seeing?”

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

“Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”

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

“A man is only as good as what he loves.”

“I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style.”

“In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness.”

“A writer is a reader moved to emulation.”

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

“Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.”

“People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.”

“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.”

“Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.”

“Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.”

“Human suffering itself has become a kind of commodity.”

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

“Conquered people tend to be witty.”

“The spirit knows that its growth is the real aim of existence.”