Saul Bellow Life Quotations

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.

Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent?

Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.

With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything...

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.

Let the enemies of life step down.

My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. But the over-examined life makes you wish you were dead. Given the alternative, I'd rather be living.

There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.