Saul Bellow (born 10 June 1915, died 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times.
Quotes on writing:
- A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
- A good novel is worth more than the best scientific study.
- People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
- 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’ve discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgement and to say in his heart of hearts, “To hell with you.”
- 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 anaesthetic with confidence.
- A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?
- You become a writer because you’re convinced that you have a grip on reality of a certain distinctive kind. It belongs to you and to others who share such a recognition.
- When I finish something, I generally put it on the shelf, and I very seldom look at it unless somebody mentions it to me, and then I open the book, and I read it, and I say, “Did I do that?”
Sextile 