Saul Bellow Quotes

Most of the characteristics which make for success in writing are precisely those which we are all taught to repress ... the firm belief that you are an important person, that you are a lot smarter than most people, and that your ideas are so damned important that everybody should listen to you.

Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.

People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others. [The human element]

Any two people have different ideas of what is important.

In the Art of Dreaming Don Juan tells Carlos, "... most of our energy goes into upholding our importance... if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two we would provide ourselves with enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe."

You've heard of people living in a fool's paradise? Well, Leonora has a duplex there.

What makes me angry is the idea that people would be going to a movie because of what I said about it. It makes me feel, I don't know, arrogant, self-important, self-aggrandizing, whatever. Like I'm being used.

Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.

The education explosion is producing a vast number of people who want to live significant, important lives but lack the ability to satisfy this craving for importance by individual achievement. The country is being swamped with nobodies who want to be somebodies.

If you keep your perspective correct and understand that people are coming to you because your gift makes room for you in the world, then you do not need to wonder or worry about having to misplace your importance as a person.

My dad did teach me a very important lesson about people when he explained to me that everybody around you will have an invisible sign on their head, which says, "Make me feel important."

As far as I'm concerned, everything bad that happens in the world stems from the same place, they're people who don't feel important.

In many ways we are a dream for people, not a reality. That counts in your mind. It shows how much you can touch people, and as much as you can try to give those people somehow it is nothing compared to what they live in their own mind, in their dreams, for you.

I feel like my life is something purposeful. Many people have told me that after they listen to my talk, some point which I made, they got certain ideas and their whole life is changed. They are happier.

People who mattered could not take the humdrum world. But this was not the world, it was enchantment; and all of it was mine.

To sustain a career in show business, you have to have a certain amount of delusion, because it's such an insane way to make a living. The idea that you're going to say, "Oh, I think I deserve to be paid attention to, and people should listen to what I have to say, and everybody should look at me," that's a little bit delusional in a way.

Being an artist and having a following can be a very scary thing because idolization makes you question your inner role in the universe. A lot of people get caught up in this idea of, "Wow! This world does revolve around me," and it most certainly does not. It's the exact opposite; these people don't exist for you, you exist for them.

It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom , as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.

I think this is something that is naturally built in in people, a need for attention and a need to be special and we are always trying to find a balance.

How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right?

Mere absurdity has never prevented the triumph of bad ideas, if they accord with easily aroused fantasies of an existence freed of human limitations.

And while I was not an admirer of people in the specific, I liked them in the abstract. It is only the execution of the idea that disappoints.

With this show [Stand-Up Revolution ], I loved the idea that I would be picking the talent that goes on, not the network. It was me handpicking people who might not have gotten the chance to be on TV. So, I thought it was real cool that I was putting people up there.

We need saints; we need this head - this talking head - to communicate. Every single religion you have people that go in-between, that can talk to god or communicate ideas. Then there are the talking heads in the news every time we watch TV. No matter how complex, you still need a person there to tell you what happened: a storyteller of sorts. I find that fascinating that we feel so attached to this primitive mode of connection, this primitive interface to the world.

Some people want tolerance to mean now that all ideas are equally valid. That's nonsense. There are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong.