Saul Bellow

"The main thing is to be kind. Being kind is more important than being right."

"Losing a parent is something like driving through a plateglass window. You didn't know it was there until it was too late to brake."

"The facts about us are not generous; the truth is likely to be humiliating."

"I want to live. The world is disagreeable; it is often impossible and ridiculous—but I want to live."

"A man may say, 'From now on I'm going to speak the truth.' But the real truth is he can't."

"There is no despair so absolute as comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow."

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

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

"The life of a human being, I think, is a lonely thing. It's a solitary trip."

"Ragged people sleeping in the park, but the city was still beautiful."

"What do you do with yourself when reality leaves you cold?"

"I'm thinking of your happiness. I want you to be happy."

"We are always looking for the book it will change everything."

"The joyful spirit of creation is the greatest of all virtues."

"You never have to change anything you got drunk and said."

"Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos."

"The novelist must penetrate every corner of complex reality."

"What is this madness of these modern days? A man can't even take his own part."

"History, like a bad riddle, teaches by example, not by precept."

"We are dying from thinness and emptiness."

"There is no money better spent than money for education and travel."

"Human life is far too important to be taken seriously."

"The life of an intellectual is a kind of imprisonment."

"In the confusion we stay human. When the struggle ceases, the meaning is lost."

"Success is like some horrible, inexorable force."

"We must get into the souls of people. But these souls are very strange and very distant."

"Memory is life. Without it, life would be unbearable."

"The heart is ignorant."

"I've endured considerable stress, and I'm still here."

"The strange experience of the intellectual who looks at himself and wonders who is observing whom."