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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.

-Saul Bellow

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The Physical Body Is

Saul Bellow

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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.

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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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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...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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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 Would Like To Explain That I Consider Prayer Above All An Act Of Gratitude For Existence.

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

There Is Much To Be Said For Exotic Marriages. If Your Husband Is A Bore, It Takes Years Longer To Discover.

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

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?

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.

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

...is The Carbon Molecule Lined With Thought?

But She's A Nut, And Nuts Win.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

And What About All The Good I Have In My Heart - Does It Mean Anything?

We Are Funny Creatures. We Don't See The Stars As They Are, So Why Do We Love Them? They Are Not Small Gold Objects, But Endless Fire.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Am A Phoenix Who Runs After Arsonists.

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

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.

The Best Argument Is An Undeniably Good Book.

Death Deserves Dignity.

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!

A Novel Is Balanced Between A Few True Impressions And The Multitude Of False Ones That Make Up Most Of What We Call Life. It Tells Us That For Every Human Being There Is A Diversity Of Existences, That The Single Existence Is Itself An Illusion In Part, That These Many Existences Signify Something, Tend To Something, Fulfill Something; It Promises Us Meaning, Harmony, And Even Justice.

When We Ask For Advice, We Are Usually Looking For An Accomplice.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

There's A Kind Of Emptiness At The Center Of Life ... Nothing To Form Your Life On, Or By.

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.

A Man Is Only As Good As What He Loves.

Funny Valentines Day

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.

Anxiety Destroys Scale, And Suffering Makes Us Lose Perspective.

Fidelity Is For Phonographs

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.

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

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

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.

In Expressing Love We Belong Among The Undeveloped Countries.

Expressing Love

I Immersed Myself In The Periodic Table Gladly And Gratefully. There Is Nothing Superfluous Here, Everything This Book Contains Is Essential. It Is Wonderful Pure, And Beautifully Translated...i Was Deeply Impressed.

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.

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

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.

I Don't Know Exactly How It's Done. I Let It Alone A Good Deal.

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

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

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

(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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Is Our Species Crazy? Plenty Of Evidence.

Strict Seriousness Was Far More Dangerous Than Any Joke.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

What Homo Sapien Imagines, He May Slowly Convert Himself To.

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

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

Unexpected Intrusions Of Beauty. This Is What Life Is.

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.

To Tell The Truth I Never Had It So Good. But I Lacked The Strength Of Character To Bear Such Joy.

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

The Hour That Burst The Spirit's Sleep.

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

Certain Blood Will Be Given For Half Certain Reasons, As In All Wars.

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

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.

The Two Real Problems In Life Are Boredom And Death.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Am Something Of A Crank About Sleep, For If I Get Seven And A Quarter Hours Instead Of Eight I Feel Afflicted And Drag Myself Around, Although There's Nothing Really Wrong With Me. It's Just Another Idea. That's How It Is With My Ideas; They Seem To Get Strong While I Weaken.

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

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

I Am An American – Chicago Born.

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

I've Discovered That Rejections Are Not Altogether A Bad Thing. They Teach A Writer To Rely On His Own Judgment And To Say In His Heart Of Hearts, 'to Hell With You.'

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

A Human Soul Devoid Of Longing Was A Soul Deformed, Deprived Of Its Highest Good, Sick Unto Death.

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.

Well, Everybody Has A History.

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.

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

"what Do Women Want?" "they Eat Green Salad And Drink Human Blood."

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Terms Which, In His Inmost Heart, Each Man Knows. As I Know Mine. As All Know. For That Is The Truth Of It — That We All Know, God, That We Know, That We Know, We Know, We Know.

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

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 First Undressing Of Two Lovers Is A Most Special Event.

For God's Sake,' The Dog Is Saying, 'open The Universe A Little More!

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

When The Striving Ceases, There Is Life Waiting As A Gift.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

No Realistic, Sane Person Goes Around Chicago Without Protection.

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

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.

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

Showing Gratitude

There Are Times When The Most Practical Thing Is To Lie Down.

Practical Things

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

There Is Simply Too Much To Think About.

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

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

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

Art Attempts To Find In The Universe, In Matter As Well As In The Facts Of Life, What Is Fundamental, Enduring, Essential.

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.

Let The Enemies Of Life Step Down.

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

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)

A Plan Relieves You Of The Torment Of Choice.

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

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.

Each Man Has His Own Batch Of Poems.

I Must Play The Instrument I've Got.

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.

Guys Like You Make Life Easy For Some Women.

A Writer Is In The Broadest Sense A Spokesman Of His Community. Through Him That Community Comes To Know Its Heart. Without Such Knowledge, How Long Can It Survive?

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

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.

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

Love Is The Most Potent Cosmetic.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

A Writer Is A Reader Moved To Emulation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Live Or Die But Don't Poison Everything.

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.

One Thought-murder A Day Keeps The Psychiatrist Away.

It's Goodbye To Reality When Love Sets In.

Facts Always Are Sensational.

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Nicolas Berggruen

Samuel R. Delany

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