Author: Saul Bellow

Cited by

• John Updike (1)
  • IN: Self-Consciousness (1989) Memoir, American
    EPIGRAPH: Of all that might be omitted in thinking, the worst was to omit your being
    FROM: What Kind of Day Did you Have, (1984), Novel, US
• Ian McEwan (1)
  • IN: Saturday (2005) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You—you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.
    FROM: Herzog, (1964), Novel, Canada
• Timothy Mo (2)
  • IN: Pure (2012) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The ancestral Jewish terms for it were, first, Tum-tum, dating perhaps from the Babylonian captivity. Sometimes the word was andreygenes, obviously of Alexandrian, Hellanistic origin -- the two sexes merged in one erotic and perverse darkness. Mixtures of archaism and modernity were especially appealing to Ravelstein, who could not be contained in modernity and overflowed all the ages.
    FROM: Ravelstein, (2000), Novel, US/Canada
• Jess Walter (1)
  • IN: The Financial Lives of the Poets (2009) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Poets have to dream, and dreaming in America is no cinch.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, Canada/US
• Nathaniel Rich (1)
  • IN: Odds Against Tomorrow (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: New York makes one think about the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it.
    FROM: Mr Sammler's Planet, (1970), [NA], US/Canada
• Dan Simmons (1)
  • IN: Song of Kali (None) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: ". . . there is a darkness. It is for everyone . . . Only some Greeks and admirers of theirs, in their liquid noon, where the friendship of beauty to human things was perfect, thought they were clearly divided from this darkness. And these Greeks too were in it. But still they are the admiration of the rest of the mud-sprung, famine- knifed, street-pounding, war- rattled, difficult, painstaking, kicked in the belly, grief and cartilage mankind, the multitude, some under a coal-sucking Vesuvius of chaos smoke, some inside a heaving Calcutta midnight, who very well know where they are."
    FROM: The Adventures of Augie March, (1953), Novel, US/Canada
• Alessandro Piperno (1)
  • IN: The Worst Intentions (2005) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: Celine recommended that the Jews be exterminated like bacteria. It's the doctor in him, I suppose.
    FROM: Ravelstein, (2000), Novel, US/Canada
• Peter Orner (1)
  • IN: Love and Shame and Love (2011) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: In Chicago I had unfinished emotional business.
    FROM: The Actual, (1997), Novel, US/Canada
• Peter Kocan (1)
  • IN: Fresh Fields (2004) Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: Community, kinship, roots? It was the essence of your situation that you had no such connections. You were, if you could bear it, ideally free.
    FROM: NULL, (1977), Lecture, US/Canada
• David Bergen (1)
  • IN: The Matter with Morris (2010) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: Oh, for a change of heart, a change of heart - a true change of heart!
    FROM: Herzog, (1964), Novel, Canada/ US
• Justin Taylor (1)
  • IN: Flings (2014) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: Oh, for a change of heart -- a true change of heart!
    FROM: Herzog, (1964), Novel, US/Canada