Saul Bellow

"Modern man is estranged from the universe."

"You can't help but admire the people who are up at the crack of dawn."

"The private sphere is the real sphere of art."

"Intelligence is the ability to ask the right questions."

"Nobody does anything well unless they really love doing it."

"The difficulty is to associate with people who are not entirely stupid."

"God keeps a small, modest place in the human heart."

"America has grown prosperous but not wise."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free."

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have."

"We must accept that the world is much stranger than we believe."

"Art can tell us things about being alive that nothing else can tell us."

"The task of the artist is to make the strange familiar."

"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely transcribe it."

"Maturity consists of no longer being taken in by oneself."

"The only true immortality is in the work you leave behind."

"Life is too hard to take seriously."

"Ideas without facts are sterile; facts without ideas are useless."

"In modern times, nothing is more serious than the comic spirit."

"We need to imagine life differently to live it differently."

"The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love."

"A poem is a form of mathematical truth."

"Human nature doesn't change, only circumstances do."

"The purpose of art is to delight us and to instruct us."

"Fear is what keeps most people from their dreams."

"There is no way to be a writer if you don't write."

"The best things in life are not things."

"What every person seeks is recognition."

"The writer must refuse to become a public servant."

"Civilization has greatly improved the human condition."