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Open Discussion Of Many Major Public Questions Has For Some Time Now Been Taboo. We Can't Open Our Mouths Without Being Denounced As Racists, Misogynists, Supremacists, Imperialists Or Fascists. As For The Media, They Stand Ready To Trash Anyone So Designated.

-Saul Bellow

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Open Discussion Of Many

Saul Bellow

...

Open Discussion Of Many Major Public Questions Has For Some Time Now Been Taboo. We Can't Open Our Mouths Without Being Denounced As Racists, Misogynists, Supremacists, Imperialists Or Fascists. As For The Media, They Stand Ready To Trash Anyone So Designated.

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More From Saul Bellow

Each Man Has His Own Batch Of Poems.

How Should I Know Why! I Didn't Invent Human Beings, Iggy.

Unless You're Completely Exploded, There's Always Something To Be Grateful For.

Showing Gratitude

But Privately When Things Got Very Bad I Often Looked Into Books To See Whether I Could Find Some Helpful Words, And One Day I Read, "the Forgiveness Of Sins Is Perpetual And Righteousness First Is Not Required." This Impressed Me So Deeply That I Went Around Saying It To Myself. But Then I Forgot Which Book It Was.

Is Our Species Crazy? Plenty Of Evidence.

The Only Truly Intersting Side Of The Matter Was The Intimate Design Of The Injury, The Fact That It Was So Penetrating, Custom-made Exactly To Your Measure. It's Fascinating That Hatred Should Be So Personal As To Be Almost Loving. The Knife And The Wound Aching For Each Other.

You Have One Of Two Choices. Either You Can Panic And Start Making Frantic Attempts To Reform Under The Glare Of These Awful Critical Eyes, Or You Can Just Say, "the Hell With You! I Know What I'm Doing. If You Don't Yet, It's Because You Haven't Given Me An Attentive Reading.

Take Our Politicians: They're A Bunch Of Yo-yos. The Presidency Is Now A Cross Between A Popularity Contest And A High School Debate, With An Encyclopedia Of Cliches.

I Am A Phoenix Who Runs After Arsonists.

Hapiness Can Only Be Found If You Can Free Yourself Of All Other Distractions.

You Have To Fight For Your Life. That's The Chief Condition On Which You Hold It.

People Don't Realize How Much They Are In The Grip Of Ideas. We Live Among Ideas Much More Than We Live In Nature.

The Flesh Would Shrink And Go, The Blood Would Dry, But No One Believes In His Mind Of Minds Or Heart Of Hearts That The Pictures Do Stop.

There Is Simply Too Much To Think About.

The Body, She Says, Is Subject To The Force Of Gravity. But The Soul Is Ruled By Levity, Pure.

Some People, If They Didn't Make It Hard For Themselves, Might Fall Asleep.

It Seems, After All That There Are No Nonpeculiar People.

She's Very Pretty But She's Honey From The Icebox, If You Know What I Mean. Cold Sweets Won't Spread.

All Human Accomplishment Has The Same Origin, Identically. Imagination Is A Force Of Nature. Is This Not Enough To Make A Person Full Of Ecstasy? Imagination, Imagination, Imagination.

Forces Of Nature

An Exchange Occurs Between Man And Woman. Love And Thought Complete Each Other In The Human Pair, And Something Like An Exchange Of Souls Takes Place, According To The Divine Plan.

The Modern Reader (or Viewer, Or Listener: Let's Include Everybody) Is Perilously Overloaded. His Attention Is, To Use The Latest Lingo,'targeted' By Powerful Forces? Our Consciousness Is A Staging Area, A Field Of Operations For All Kinds Of Enterprises, Which Make Free Use Of It.

It's Usually The Selfish People Who Are Loved The Most. They Do What You Deny Yourself, And You Love Them For It. You Give Them Your Heart.

As For Types Like My Own, Obscurely Motivated By The Conviction That Our Existence Was Worthless If We Didn't Make A Turning Point Of It, We Were Assigned To The Humanities, To Poetry, Philosophy, Painting - The Nursery Games Of Humankind, Which Had To Be Left Behind When The Age Of Science Began. The Humanities Would Be Called Upon To Choose A Wallpaper For The Crypt, As The End Drew Near.

A Good Novel Is Worth More Then The Best Scientific Study.

The More Realistic You Are The More You Threaten The Grounds Of Your Own Art.

I Mean You Have Been Disappointed In Love, But Don't You Know How Many Things There Are To Be Disappointed In Besides Love? You Are Lucky To Be Still Disappointed In Love. Later It May Be Even More Terrible.

...chaos Doesn't Run The Whole Show.

All Human Accomplishment Has This Same Origin, Identically. Imagination Is A Force Of Nature. Is This Not Enough To Make A Person Full Of Ecstasy? Imagination, Imagination, Imagination! It Converts To Actual. It Sustains, It Alters, It Redeems!

It Is Wrong To Turn A Man (a Subject) Into A Thing (an Object). By Means Of Spiritual Dialogue, The I-it Relationship Becomes An I-thou Relationship. God Comes And Goes In Man's Soul. And Men Come And Go In Each Other's Souls. Sometimes They Come And Go In Each Other's Beds, Too.

The First Undressing Of Two Lovers Is A Most Special Event.

...there Is No Old Age Of The Soul.

You Have, Like The External World, Your Own Phenomena Inside.

There Is Only One Way To Defeat The Enemy, And That Is To Write As Well As One Can. The Best Argument Is An Undeniably Good Book.

It Wasn't That He Was Specially Ungenerous But That He Put Things Off To Give His Generosity A Longer And More Significant Route.

The Spirit Knows That Its Growth Is The Real Aim Of Existence.

A Great Deal Of Intelligence Can Be Invested In Ignorance When The Need For Illusion Is Deep.

Is Love Supposed To Ruin You? It Seems To Me You Shouldn't Destroy Yourself Out Of Life For Purposes Of Love--or What Good Is It?

Fidelity Is For Phonographs

I Want To Tell You, Don't Marry Suffering. Some People Do. They Get Married To It, And Sleep And Eat Together, Just As Husband And Wife. If They Go With Joy They Think It's Adultery.

... A Fellow Can't Predict What He Will Pick Up In The Form Of Influence.

I Blame Myself For Not Often Enough Seeing The Extraordinary In The Ordinary. Somewhere In His Journals, Dostoyevky Remarks That A Writer Can Begin Anywhere, At The Most Commonplace Thing, Scratch Around In It Long Enough, Pry And Dig Away Long Enough, And Lo!, Soon He Will Hit Upon The Marvelous.

Art Is Order, Made Out Of The Chaos Of Life.

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.

Excuse Me ... But I Reject Your Definitions Of Me.

I See That I've Become A Really Bad Correspondent. It's Not That I Don't Think Of You. You Come Into My Thoughts Often. But When You Do It Appears To Me That I Owe You A Particularly Grand Letter. And So You End In The "warehouse Of Good Intentions": "can't Do It Now." "then Put It On Hold." This Is One's Strategy For Coping With Old Age, And With Death--because One Can't Die With So Many Obligations In Storage. Our Clever Species, So Fertile And Resourceful In Denying Its Weaknesses.

I've Never Turned Over A Fig Leaf Yet That Didn't Have A Price Tag On The Other Side.

Death Is The Black Backing On The Mirror That Allows Us To See Anything At All.

At Moments I Dislike Having A Face, A Nose, Lips, Because He Has Them.

It Would Not Be Practical For Her To Hate Herself. Luckily, God Sends A Substitute, A Husband.

Here We Write Well When We Expose Frauds And Hypocrites. We Are Great At Counting Warts And Blemishes And Weighting Feet Of Clay. In Expressing Love, We Belong Among The Underdeveloped Countries.

Losing A Parent Is Something Like Driving Through A Plate-glass Window. You Didn't Know It Was There Until It Shattered, And Then For Years To Come You're Picking Up The Pieces -- Down To The Last Glassy Splinter.

If Women Are Expected To Do The Same Work As Men, We Must Teach Them The Same Things.

I Feel That Art Has Something To Do With The Achievement Of Stillness In The Midst Of Chaos. A Stillness Which Characterizes Prayer, Too, And The Eye Of The Storm. I Think That Art Has Something To Do With An Arrest Of Attention In The Midst Of Distraction.

Guys Like You Make Life Easy For Some Women.

And What About All The Good I Have In My Heart - Does 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.

If I Had A Child Of School Age, I Would Send Him To One Of The Waldorf Schools.

We Mustn't Forget How Quickly The Visions Of Genius Become The Canned Goods Of Intellectuals.

I'm Glad I Haven't Lived In Vain.

The Secret Motive Of The Absent-minded Is To Be Innocent While Guilty. Absent-mindedness Is Spurious Innocence.

Writers Are Greatly Respected. The Intelligent Public Is Wonderfully Patient With Them, Continues To Read Them, And Endures Disappointment After Disappointment, Waiting To Hear From Art What It Does Not Hear From Theology, Philosophy, Social Theory, And What It Cannot Hear From Pure Science. Out Of The Struggle At The Center Has Come 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.

Language Is A Spiritual Mansion In Which You Live And Nobody Has The Right To Evict You.

...america Didn't Have To Fight Scarcity And We All Felt Guilty Before People Who Still Had To Struggle For Bread And Freedom In The Old Way ... We Weren't Starving, We Weren't Bugged By The Police, Locked Up In Madhouses For Our Ideas, Arrested, Deported, Slave Laborers Sent To Die In Concentration Camps. We Were Spared The Holocausts And Nights Of Terror. With Our Advantages We Should Be Formulating The New Basic Questions For Mankind. But Instead We Sleep. Just Sleep And Sleep, And Eat And Play And Fuss And Sleep Again.

The Physical Body Is An Agent Of The Spirit And Its Mirror. It Is An Engine And A Reflection Of The Spirit. It Is The Spirit's Ingenious Memorandum To Itself And The Spirit Sees Itself In My Body, Just As I See My Own Face In A Looking Glass. My Nerves Reflect This. The Earth Is Literally A Mirror Of Thoughts. Objects Themselves Are Embodied Thoughts. Death Is The Dark Backing That A Mirror Needs If We Are To See Anything.

How Could I Be Anything But A Dissenter? Who Wants The Opinion Of A Group?

Can We Find Nothing Good To Say About Tv? Well, Yes, It Brings Scattered Solitaries Into A Sort Of Communion. Tv Allows Your Isolated American To Think That He Participates In The Life Of The Entire Country. It Does Not Actually Place Him In A Community, But His Heart Is Warmed With The Suggestion (on The Whole False) That There Is A Community Somewhere In The Vicinity And That His Atomized Consciousness Will Be Drawn Back Toward The Whole.

Nobody Asks You To Love The Whole World, Only To Be Honest, Ehrlich. Don't Have A Loud Mouth. The More You Love People The More They'll Mix You Up. A Child Loves, A Person Respects. Respect Is Better Than Love.

In Here, The Human Bosom -- Mine, Yours, Everybody's -- There Isn't Just One Soul. There's A Lot Of Souls. But There Are Two Main Ones, The Real Soul And A Pretender Soul. Now! Every Man Realizes That He Has To Love Something Or Somebody. He Feels That He Must Go Outward. 'if Thou Canst Not Love, What Art Thou?' Are You With Me?

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.

I'm Afraid There's Nothing We Can Do About The Journalists; We Can Only Hope That They Will Die Off As The Deerflies Do Towards The End Of August.

The Stillness In Art Characterizes Prayer, And The Eye Of The Storm.

I Have Begun In Old Age To Understand...that We Seldom If Ever Realize How Generous We Are To Ourselves, And Just How Stingy With Others.

Retirement Is An Illusion. Not A Reward But A Mantrap. The Bankrupt Underside Of Success. A Shortcut To Death. Golf Courses Are Too Much Like Cemeteries.

It Is Sometimes Necessary To Repeat What All Know. All Mapmakers Should Place The Mississippi In The Same Location And Avoid Originality.

Let The Enemies Of Life Step Down.

The Best Argument Is An Undeniably Good Book.

You're All Alone When You're A Writer. Sometimes You Just Feel You Need A Humanity Bath. Even A Ride On The Subway Will Do That. But It's Much More Interesting To Talk About Books. After All, That's What Life Used To Be For Writers: They Talk Books, Politics, History, America. Nothing Has Replaced That.

I Pretended Not To Understand. One Of Life's Hardest Jobs, To Make A Quick Understanding Slow. I Think I Succeeded, Thought Herzog.

Fun Comes Hard - Like, Alas, Its Prarens, Pleasure And Happiness, Whom We Have To Pursue.

Erotic Practices Have Become Diversified. Sex Used To Be A Single-crop Farming, Like Cotton Or Wheat; Now People Raise All Kinds Of Things.

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.

In The Greatest Confusion There Is Still An Open Channel To The Soul. It May Be Difficult To Find Because By Midlife It Is Overgrown, And Some Of The Wildest Thickets That Surround It Grow Out Of What We Describe As Our Education. But The Channel Is Always There, And It Is Our Business To Keep It Open, To Have Access To The Deepest Part Of Ourselves.

Americans Must Be The Most Sententious People In History. Far Too Busy To Be Religious, They Have Always Felt That They Sorely Needed Guidance.

In An Age Of Enormities, The Emotions Are Naturally Weakened. We Are Continually Called Upon To Have Feelings - About Genocide, For Instance, Or About Famine Or The Blowing Up Of Passenger Planes - And We Are All Aware That We Are Incapable Of Reacting Appropriately. A Guilty Consciousness Of Emotional Inadequacy Or Impotence Makes People Doubt Their Own Human Weight.

If I'm Out Of My Mind, It's All Right With Me, Thought Moses Herzog.

One Thought-murder A Day Keeps The Psychiatrist Away.

Also, He Was Smoking A Cigar, And When A Man Is Smoking A Cigar, Wearing A Hat, He Has An Advantage; It Is Harder To Find Out How He Feels.

We Are Always Looking For The Book It Is Necessary To Read Next.

Human Character Is Smaller Now, People Don't Have Durable Passions; They've Replaced Passions With Excitement.

Our Society, Like Decadent Rome, Has Turned Into An Amusement Society, With Writers Chief Among The Court Jesters

Towards The End Of Your Life You Have Something Like A Pain Schedule To Fill Out - A Long Schedule Like A Federal Document, Only It's Your Pain Schedule. Endless Categories. First, Physical Causes - Like Arthritis, Gallstones, Menstrual Cramps. New Category, Injured Vanity, Betrayal, Swindle, Injustice. But The Hardest Items Of All Have To Do With Love. The Question Then Is: So Why Does Everybody Persist? If Love Cuts Them Up So Much.

My Face Too Blind, My Mind Too Limited, My Instincts Too Narrow. But This Intensity, Doesn't It Mean Anything?

We Are All Such Accidents. We Do Not Make Up History And Culture. We Simply Appear, Not By Our Own Choice. We Make What We Can Of Our Condition With The Means Available. We Must Accept The Mixture As We Find It - The Impurity Of It, The Tragedy Of It, The Hope Of It.

The Sand Swallows Burst Out Of Their Scupper Holes In The Bluffs And Out Over The Transparent Drown Of The Water, Back Again To The White, To The Brown, To The Black, From Moving To Stock-still Sand Waves And Water-worked Woods And Roots That Hugged And Twisted In The Sun.

Conquered People Tend To Be Witty.

Everybody Needs His Memories. They Keep The Wolf Of Insignificance From The Door.

It Is A Joy To Be Choked With Thought.

A Man May Say, "from Now On I'm Going To Speak The Truth." But The Truth Hears Him And Runs Away And Hides Before He's Even Done Speaking.

In The History Of The World Many Souls Have Been, Are, And Will Be, And With A Little Reflection This Is Marvelous And Not Depressing. Many Jerks Are Made Gloomy About It, For They Think Quantity Buries Them Alive. That's Just Crazy. Numbers Are Very Dangerous, But The Main Thing About Them Is That They Humble Your Pride. And That's Good.

The Ocean Was Waiting With Grand And Bitter Provocations, As If It Invited You To Think How Deep It Was, How Much Colder Than Your Blood Or Saltier, Or To Outguess It, To Tell Which Were Its Feints Or Passes And Which Its Real Intentions, Meaning Business.

Well, Everybody Has A History.

... Unless You Made Your Life A Turning Point, There Was No Reason For Existing.

A Fool Can Throw A Stone In A Pond That 100 Wise Men Can Not Get Out.

The Dream Of Man's Heart ... Is That Life May Complete In Significant Pattern.

I Think That New York Is Not The Cultural Centre Of America, But The Business And Administrative Centre Of American Culture.

Live Or Die But Don't Poison Everything.

I Feel That Art Has Something To Do With The Achievement Of Stillness In The Midst Of Chaos.

For The First Time In History, The Human Species As A Whole Has Gone Into Politics. Everyone Is In The Act, And There Is No Telling What May Come Of It.

I’ve Had All The Monstrosity I Want.

...i Am Much Better Now At Ambiguities.

The Life Of Every Citizen Is Becoming A Business. This, It Seems To Me, Is One Of The Worst Interpretations Of The Meaning Of Human Life History Has Ever Seen. Man's Life Is Not A Business.

I Am Deeply Moved When I Write. I Get Turned On By It. I've Never Used Any Drugs For Stimulation. I Don't Use Words Loosely. When I'm Working And The Right Word Comes, There Is An Answering Resonance Within Me. There Is Also A Hardness Of Intention That Goes With It. There Is No Idleness In It.

People Can Lose Their Lives In Libraries. They Ought To Be Warned.

Associate With The Noblest People You Can Find; Read The Best Books; Live With The Mighty; But Learn To Be Happy Alone.

In An Age Of Madness, To Expect To Be Untouched By Madness Is A Form Of Madness. But The Pursuit Of Sanity Can Be A Form Of Madness, Too

The Hour That Burst The Spirit's Sleep.

A Man Must Have Limits And Cannot Give In To The Wild Desires To Be Everything And Everyone And Everything To Everyone.

I Labor, I Spend, I Strive, I Design, I Love, I Cling, I Uphold, I Give Way, I Envy, I Long, I Scorn, I Die, I Hide, I Want. Faster, Much Faster Than Any Man Could Make The Tally.

Ninety Per Cent Of Life Is A Nightmare, Do You Think I Am Going To Get It Rounded Up To Hundred Per Cent?

Humankind Struggles With Collective Powers For Its Freedom, The Individual Struggles With Dehumanization For The Possession Of His Soul.

Great Pressure Is Brought To Bear To Make Us Undervalue Ourselves. On The Other Hand, Civilization Teaches That Each Of Us Is An Inestimable Prize. There Are, Then, These Two Preparations: One For Life And The Other For Death. Therefore We Value And Are Ashamed To Value Ourselves.

One Must Bear In Mind The Odd Angle Or Slant That The Rays Of Love Have To Take In Order To Reach A Heart Like Mine.

The Best And Purest Human Beings, From The Beginning Of Time, Have Understood That Life Is Sacred.

I Am More Stupid About Some Things Than Others; Not Equally Stupid In All Directions; I Am Not A Well-rounded Person.

Myself Is Thus And So, And Will Continue Thus And So. And Why Fight It? My Balance Comes From Instability.

The Two Real Problems In Life Are Boredom And Death.

The Soul Has To Find And Hold Its Ground Against Hostile Forces, Sometimes Embodied In Ideas Which Frequently Deny Its Very Existence, And Which Indeed Often Seem To Be Trying To Annul It Altogether.

But A Man's Character Is His Fate... And In The End There Isn't Any Way To Disguise The Nature Of The Knocks By Acoustical Work On The Door Or Gloving The Knuckles.

You Can Spend The Entire Second Half Of Your Life Recovering From The Mistakes Of The First Half.

There Are Evils That Have The Ability To Survive Identification And Go On For Ever... Money, For Instance, Or War.

Strict Seriousness Was Far More Dangerous Than Any Joke.

You Never Have To Change Anything You Got Up In The Middle Of The Night To Write.

One Way Or Another The No Doubt Mad Idea Entered My Mind That My Own Actions Had Historic Importance And This Fantasy (?) Made It Appear That People Who Harmed Me Were Interfering With An Important Experiment.

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.

When I Didn't Argue He Was Satisfied He Had Persuaded Me, And Was Not The First To Make That Mistake.

From Euclid To Newton There Were Straight Lines. The Modern Age Analyzes The Wavers.

In Every Community There Is A Class Of People Profoundly Dangerous To The Rest. I Don't Mean The Criminals. For Them We Have Punitive Sanctions. I Mean The Leaders. Invariably The Most Dangerous People Seek The Power. While In The Parlors Of Indignation The Right-thinking Citizen Brings His Heart To A Boil. (p. 51)

... An Era Of Turmoil And Ideological Confusion, The Principal Phenomenon Of The Present Age.

It's Not Up To Me ... To Make The World Consistent.

The Late Philosopher Morris R. Cohen Of Ccny Was Asked By A Student In The Metaphysics Course, Professor Cohen, How Do I Know That I Exist? The Keen Old Prof Replied, And Who Is Asking?

Any Artist Should Be Grateful For A Naive Grace Which Puts Him Beyond The Need To Reason Elaborately.

In Politics Continental Europe Was Infantile - Horrifying. What America Lacked, For All Its Political Stability, Was The Capacity To Enjoy Intellectual Pleasures As Though They Were Sensual Pleasures. This Is What Europe Offered, Or Was Said To Offer.

Because I Have Become Such A Solitary, And Not In The Aristotelian Sense: Not A Beast, Not A God. Rather, A Loner Troubled By Longings, Incapable Of Finding A Suitable Language And Despairing At The Impossibility Of Composing Messages In A Playable Key--as If I No Longer Understood The Codes Used By The Estimable People Who Wanted To Hear From Me And Would Have So Much To Reply If Only The Impediments Were Taken Away.

No Realistic, Sane Person Goes Around Chicago Without Protection.

(socrates) Said There Were Only Two Possibilities. Either The Soul Is Immortal Or, After Death, Things Would Be Again As Blank As They Were Before We Were Born.

California Is Like An Artificial Limb The Rest Of The Country Doesn't Really Need. You Can Quote Me On That.

Anxiety Destroys Scale, And Suffering Makes Us Lose Perspective.

Facts Always Are Sensational.

Unfortunately For The Betterment Of Mankind It Is Not Always The Fair-minded Who Are In The Right.

I Must Play The Instrument I've Got.

Death Is The Dark Backing A Mirror Needs If We Are To See Anything

All A Writer Has To Do To Get A Woman Is To Say He's A Writer. It's An Aphrodisiac.

Only Self-hatred Could Lead Him To Ruin Himself Because His Heart Was "broken.

It's No Disgrace To Be A Private, You Know. Socrates Was A Plain Foot Soldier, A Hoplite.

He Believed That He Must, That He Could And Would Recover The Good Things, The Happy Things, The Easy Tranquil Things Of Life. He Had Made Mistakes, But He Could Overlook These. He Had Been A Fool, But That Could Be Forgiven. The Time Wasted--must Be Relinquished. What Else Could One Do About It? Things Were Too Complex, But They Might Be Reduced To Simplicity Again. Recovery Was Possible.

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.

I Seem To Have The Blind Self-acceptance Of The Eccentric Who Can't Conceive That His Eccentricities Are Not Clearly Understood.

Readiness To Answer All Questions Is The Infallible Sign Of Stupidity.

Boredom Is An Instrument Of Social Control. Power Is The Power To Impose Boredom, To Command Stasis, To Combine This Stasis With Anguish. The Real Tedium, Deep Tedium, Is Seasoned With Terror And With Death.

It's Hard For Writers To Get On With Their Work If They Are Convinced That They Owe A Concrete Debt To Experience And Cannot Allow Themselves The Privilege Of Ranging Freely Through Social Classes And Professional Specialties. A Certain Pride In Their Own Experience, Perhaps A Sense Of The Property Rights Of Others In Their Experience, Holds Them Back.

Everybody Knows There Is No Fineness Or Accuracy Of Suppression; If You Hold Down One Thing, You Hold Down The Adjoining.

Everyone Tries To Create A World He Can Live In, And What He Can't Use He Often Can't See. But The Real World Is Already Created, And If Your Fabrication Doesn't Correspond, Then Even If You Feel Noble And Insist On There Being Something Better Than What People Call Reality, That Better Something Needn't Try To Exceed What, In Its Actuality, Since We Know It So Little, May Be Very Surprising. If A Happy State Of Things, Surprising; If Miserable Or Tragic, No Worse Than What We Invent.

The Writer Cannot Make The Seas Of Distraction Stand Still, But He [or She] Can At Times Come Between The Madly Distracted And The Distractions.

De Tocqueville Considered The Impulse Toward Well-being As One Of The Strongest Impulses Of A Democratic Society. He Can't Be Blamed For Underestimating The Destructive Powers Generated By This Same Impulse.

Bringing People Into The Here-and-now. The Real Universe. That's The Present Moment. The Past Is No Good To Us. The Future Is Full Of Anxiety. Only The Present Is Real--the Here-and-now. Seize The Day.

A Plan Relieves You Of The Torment Of Choice.

A Writer Is A Reader Moved To Emulation.

The Main Reason For Rewriting Is Not To Achieve A Smooth Surface, But To Discover The Inner Truth Of Your Characters.

Brother Raises A Hand Against Brother And Son Against Father (how Terrible!) And The Father Also Against Son. And Moreover It Is A Continuity-matter, For If The Father Did Not Strike The Son, They Would Not Be Alike. It Is Done To Perpetuate Similarity. Oh, Henderson, Man Cannot Keep Still Under The Blows.... A Hit B? B Hit C?--we Have Not Enough Alphabet To Cover The Condition. A Brave Man Will Try To Make The Evil Stop With Him. He Shall Keep The Blow. No Man Shall Get It From Him, And That Is A Sublime Ambition.

Alternatives, And Particularly Desirable Alternatives, Grow Only On Imaginary Trees.

The Fact That There Are So Many Weak, Poor And Boring Stories And Novels Written And Published In America Has Been Ascribed By Our Rebels To The Horrible Squareness Of Our Institutions, The Idiocy Of Power, The Debasement Of Sexual Instincts, And The Failure Of Writers To Be Alienated Enough. The Poems And Novels Of These Same Rebellious Spirits, And Their Theoretical Statements, Are Grimy And Gritty And Very Boring Too, Besides Being Nonsensical, And It Is Evident By Now That Polymorphous Sexuality And Vehement Declarations Of Alienation Are Not Going To Produce Great Works Of Art Either.

A Man Should Be Able To Hear, And To Bear, The Worst That Could Be Said Of Him.

Open Discussion Of Many Major Public Questions Has For Some Time Now Been Taboo. We Can't Open Our Mouths Without Being Denounced As Racists, Misogynists, Supremacists, Imperialists Or Fascists. As For The Media, They Stand Ready To Trash Anyone So Designated.

Do We Always, Always To The Point Of Misery, Do A Thing?

Art -- The Fresh Feeling, New Harmony, The Transforming Magic Which By Means Of Myth Brings Back The Scattered Distracted Soul From Its Modern Chaos -- Art, Not Politics, Is The Remedy.

Goodness Is Achieved Not In A Vacuum, But In The Company Of Other Men, Attended By Love.

I Think That Art Has Something To Do With An Arrest Of Attention In The Midst Of Distraction.

And I Said To Myself That Unless You Conceive Death To Be A Violent Guerrilla And Kidnaper Who Snatches Those You Love, And If You Are Not Cowardly And Cannot Submit To Such Terrorism As Civilized People Now Do In Every Department Of Life, You Must Pursue And Inquire And Explore Every Possibility And Seek Everywhere And Try Everything.

Boredom Is The Conviction That You Can't Change ... The Shriek Of Unused Capacities.

A Man Is Only As Good As What He Loves.

Funny Valentines Day

And I'm Convinced That Knowing The Names Of Things Braces People Up.

She Was What We Used To Call A Suicide Blonde - Dyed By Her Own Hand.

Whoever Wants To Reach A Distant Goal Must Take Small Steps.

One Of The Booby Traps Of Freedom - Which Is Bordered On All Sides By Isolation - Is That We Think So Well Of Ourselves. I Now See That I Have Helped Myself To The Best Cuts At Life's Banquet.

A Millennial Belief In A Holy God May Have The Effect Of Deepening The Soul, But It Is Also Obviously Archaic, And Modern Influences Would Presently Bring Me Up To Date And Reveal How Antiquated My Origins Were. To Turn Away From Those Origins, However, Has Always Seemed To Me An Utter Impossibility. It Would Be A Treason To My First Consciousness To Un-jew Myself.

Death Deserves Dignity.

I Have, Perhaps, A Slave-like Constitution Which Is Too Easily Restrained By Bonds; It Then Becomes Rebellious And Bursts Out In A Comic Revolution.

A Novel Is Balanced Between A Few True Impressions And The Multitude Of False Ones That Make Up Most Of What We Call Life.

I Love Solitude, But I Prize It Most When Plenty Of Company Is Available.

I Am An American, Chicago Born – Chicago, That Somber City – And Go At Things As I Have Taught Myself, Free-style, And Will Make The Record In My Own Way: First To Knock, First Admitted; Sometimes An Innocent Knock, Sometimes A Not So Innocent. But A Man's Character Is His Fate, Says Heraclitus, And In The End There Isn't Any Way To Disguise The Nature Of The Knocks By Acoustical Work On The Door Or Gloving The Knuckles.

There Was A Disturbance In My Heart, A Voice That Spoke There And Said, I Want, I Want, I Want! It Happened Every Afternoon, And When I Tried To Suppress It It Got Even Stronger.

It Seems Hard For The American People To Believe That Anything Could Be More Exciting Than The Times Themselves. What We Read Daily And View On The Tv Has Thrust Imagined Forms Into The Shadow. We Are Staggeringly Rich In Facts, In Things, And Perhaps, Like The Nouveau Riche Of Other Ages, We Want Our Wealth Faithfully Reproduced By The Artist.

I Am A True Adorer Of Life, And If I Can't Reach As High As The Face Of It, I Plant My Kiss Somewhere Lower Down. Those Who Understand Will Require No Further Explanation.

I Don't Like To Write From A Flat, Cold Position. You Must Like What You're Doing Very Much Or Like The People -- Either Like Them Or Hate Them. You Can't Be Indifferent.

The Challenge Of Modern Freedom, Or The Combination Of Isolation And Freedom Which Confronts You, Is To Make Yourself Up. The Danger Is That You May Emerge From The Process As A Not-entirely-human Creature. (referenced In How To Lose Friends And Alienate People By Toby Young)

I Don’t Actually Take Much Stock In The Collapsing Culture Bit. I’m Beginning To See It Instead As The Conduct Of Life Without Input From Your Soul.

We Take Foreigners To Be Incomplete Americans -- Convinced That We Must Help And Hasten Their Evolution.

I Am Moneys Medium. It Passes Through Me- Taxes, Insurance, Mortgage, Child Support, Rent, Legal Fees. All This Dignified Blundering Costs Plenty.

O Lord! He Concluded, Forgive All These Trespasses. Lead Me Not Into Penn Station.

The Only Real Distinction At This Dangerous Moment In Human History And Cosmic Development Has Nothing To Do With Medals And Ribbons. Not To Fall Asleep Is Distinguished. Everything Else Is Mere Popcorn.

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Francine Pascal

M. F. K. Fisher

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