“Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”

— Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift (1975)

About Saul Bellow

1915 – 2005

Canadian-American novelist and Nobel laureate in Literature (1976).

“All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature.”

“Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.”

“Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.”

“Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.”

“If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

“No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.”

“A witticism is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

“Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end.”

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!”