In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.
— Saul Bellow
I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand.
A good novel is worth more than the best scientific study.
I'm glad I haven't lived in vain.
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.
We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
A man is only as good as what he loves.
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
What is art but a way of seeing?
With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.
A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.
In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
Conquered people tend to be witty.
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.
No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.
