History, memory - that is what makes us human, that, and our knowledge of death: 'by man came death'. For knowledge of death makes us wish to extend our lives at the expense of others. And this is the root of the struggle for power.

— Saul Bellow

I am a prisoner of perception, a compulsory witness.

— Saul Bellow

I am not an ornithologist—I am a bird.

— Saul Bellow

I am willing without further exercise in pain to open my heart. And this needs no doctrine or theology of suffering. We love apocalypses too much, and crisis ethics and florid extremism with its thrilling language. Excuse me, no. I've had all the monstrosity I want.

— Saul Bellow

I discovered, however, in the early days of our marriage that, in having her way, she put my interests ahead of her own.

— Saul Bellow

If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

— Saul Bellow

If you could arrange to avoid that routine job-world, you were an intellectual or an artist. Too restless, tremors, agitated, too mad to sit at a desk eight hours a day, you needed an institution - a higher institution.

— Saul Bellow

If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is the chief of this. All creations are his just inheritance. You don't know what you've got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality.

— Saul Bellow

I have always had a weakness for footnotes. For me a clever or a wicked footnote has redeemed many a text. And I see that I am now using a long footnote to open a serious subject - shifting in a quick move to Paris, to a penthouse in the Hotel Carillon. Early June. Breakfast time. The host is my good friend Professor Ravenstein, Abe Ravenstein. My wife and I, also staying at the Carillon, have a room below, on the sixth floor. She is still asleep. The entire floor below ours (this is not absolutely relevant, but somehow I can't avoid mentioning it) is occupied just now by Michael Jackson and his entourage. He performs nightly in some vast Parisian auditorium. Very soon his French fans will arrive and a crowd of faces will be turned upward, shouting in unison, 'Mikkel Jack-sown'. A police barrier holds the fans back. Inside, from the sixth floor, when you look down the marble stairwell you see Michael's bodyguards. One of them is doing the crossword puzzle in the 'Paris Herald'.

— Saul Bellow

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)

— Saul Bellow