Canadian-American writer (1915-2005)
Things that you write are in some degree autobiographical, but the first thing you find out about autobiography is that it's the hardest thing in the world to write. It's hard because it's very difficult to be absolutely factual about yourself. So ... when you write, you may draw on facts from your own life, but if their not in harmony with your story, they're worse than useless. You just stumble over them.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, Feb. 1986
If I want to do the same old thing, it’s easy. If I want to do something altogether new, it becomes harder. I could go on writing the stories I’ve been writing during the last few years. They have a certain charm and they’re true as far as they go. They're just not enough.
SAUL BELLOW
AGNI interview, 1997
We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.
SAUL BELLOW
"A Second Half Life,", It All Adds Up
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy -- who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity -- only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart -- does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
SAUL BELLOW
attributed, The Hidden Writer
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
SAUL BELLOW
attributed, Something About the Author