Saul Bellow

"Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it."

"We are never too old to learn something new."

"The greatest gift is the gift of understanding."

"Life is short; make it beautiful."

"The human being is a strange and wonderful creature."

"To be happy, you must first learn to be yourself."

"The task of the novelist is to make you understand the world, not to make you comfortable in it."

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

"People can't stand too much reality."

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."

"Boredom is an instrument of social control."

"You never have to change anything you believe in if you believe in it enough."

"The facts just don't matter. Belief is all that counts."

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

"All of us are crazy, only in different ways."

"The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow."

"Loving is a great activity, but it's not the whole thing."

"Rapaciousness has no limit, but the human spirit is boundless."

"There is a morality to perception."

"You must accept that you may never get answers to your questions."

"In the modern world, individuality means nothing unless it's pursued against the grain of society."

"One can never abolish human nature. If you repress it, it grows in the dark."

"What's the trick, though, is to stop talking."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

"There is simply too much to think about."

"Goodness is something chosen; it's not automatic."

"Life is a thing that happens to you while you're making other plans."

"The suffering increases the closer one gets to the truth."

"Nobody owes anybody anything."

"To tell the truth is a revolutionary act."