Saul Bellow Quotes

I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.

What is true stillness? Stillness in movement.

In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.

Wherever you go in the midst of movement and activity, carry your stillness with you. Then the chaotic movement around you will never overshadow your access to the reservoir of creativity, the field of pure potentiality.

The true creativity comes out of sitting silently. When you are so totally quiet that there is no thought, no wave in the ocean of your being, out of this silence comes a different kind of creativity.

There are two things you can do with your head down - play golf and pray.

Presence remains even amidst worldly activities. Stillness is there even when you're doing something quickly, like rushing to answer the phone. Otherwise you would be condemned to moving in slow motion.

Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation.

Your task it is, amid confusion, rush, and noise, to grasp the lasting, calm and meaningful, and finding it anew, to hold and treasure it.

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.

I love silence. I seek and create it at every opportunity. I need it to work.

Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.

The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.

In the madness, you have to find calm.

I notice a difference from the moment I meditate.

Attention is the material I work with.

Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.

Peace is not a thought, not a concept; it is a nonverbal experience.

When everything is moving and shifting, the only way to counteract chaos is stillness. When things feel extraordinary, strive for ordinary. When the surface is wavy, dive deeper for quieter waters.

When we hear some beautiful piece of Mozart or admire a wonderful building, we suddenly become present in ourselves. That's unusual nowadays because dishevelment and distraction have become an art form.

Stillness as a technique is still really captivating to me.

It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life? To learn the art of remaining motionless amid the agitation of the whirlwind, to learn to remain still and to be as transparent as this fixed light amid the frantic branches this may be a program for life.

There is so much noise in the world! May we learn to be silent in our hearts and before God.

At the still point, there the dance is.