Saul Bellow Quotes

Well, that's exactly the wrong attitude. That is not the attitude they had in World War II. You're attitude is that freedom means you can do whatever you want whenever you want it. And that sacrifice is somehow un-American. [...] But the idea that we should also be defensive about our flaws and our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities is ridiculous.

Well, it's simple to love someone," she said. "But it's hard to know when you need to say it out loud.

Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others.

If you text 'I love you' and the person writes back an emoji - no matter what that emoji is, they don't love you back.

A question I’ve thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.

Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.

How easy it is to be "deep": all you have to do is let yourself sink into your own flaws.

Imperfections would not be half so much taken notice of, if vanity did not make proclamation of them.

What's more interesting are the dynamics between people that involve hypocrisy or ignoring each other. That's what I want to write about. I like to make people uncomfortable because it's something we should be uncomfortable about.

One expresses well only the love he does not feel.

She loves you. She's just forgotten how to show it.

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others

Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

Nothing shows our weakness more than to be so sharp-sighted at spying other men's faults, and so purblind about our own.

The reason you write [songs] is because there's something you want to say that is important to you - enough to go through all the torture of writing.

There is so much love in us all, but often we are too shy to express our love, and keep it bottled up inside us. We must learn to love, to love until it hurts, and we will know how to accept love.

I'm not the most emotionally attuned guy in the world. My wife says that me writing about emotion is like Gandhi writing about gluttony.

I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.

If you love somebody; You better let it out; Don't hold it back; While you're trying to figure it out; Cause the only real pain a heart can ever know; Is the sorrow of regret; When you don't let your feelings show. So, did you say it, Did you mean it?

Out of hundreds of deals that I've done, hundreds, on four occasions I've taken advantage of the laws of this country, like other people. I'm not going to name their names because I'm not going to embarrass, but virtually every person that you read about on the front page of the business sections, they've used the law.The difference is, when somebody else uses those laws, nobody writes about it. When I use it, they say, "Trump, Trump, Trump."

I sat down in the sand, breathless with shame and failure. God, I thought, some defender of the weak. Some freedom fighter: Joan of Arc in sunscreen.

I have a special grudge against those who have the same faults as I do.

Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.

How on earth could that be done? If you try to laugh and say 'No' at the same time, it sounds like neighing - yet people are perpetually doing it in novels. If they did it in real life they would be locked up.

America is basically a hypocritical society and recognizes that hypocrisy is found throughout. The public doesn't look for politicians to tell the truth or to deliver on their promises. This country could become America the beautiful, but it never will. It's in the hands of the wrong people. And the public is so apathetic. Those who are not apathetic are dispirited, discouraged, and disheartened. Those who will sometimes feel a twitch of inspiration that would lead them to do something, they, based on their conditioning, will start to total up all the reasons why they can't succeed.