And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that's what their power is. There's one image that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose its claim to being genuine with more force than others, or one voice enlarged to thunder is heard above the others. Then a huge invention, which is the invention maybe of the world itself, and of nature, becomes the actual world - with cities, factories, public buildings, railroads, armies, dams, prisons, and movies - becomes the actuality. That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real. Then even the flowers and the moss on the stones become the moss and the flowers of a version.
Saul BellowTag: life humanity world-view
If only we dind't have hearts we wouldn't know how sad it was. But we carry around these hearts ... which give us away.
Saul Bellowit greatly bothered him that I had such a flunky job, washing cages and sweeping up dogs' hair; and also that I was no longer a college man but trying to keep up on Helmholtz who was a dead number to him; in other words, that I should be of the unformed darkened-out mass. It was often that way with me, that people would feel the world owed me distinctness.
Saul BellowWhat makes me say these things is that I see how much you care about the way people look at you. It matters too much to you. And there are people who take advantage of that. They haven't got anything of their own and they'll leave you nothing for yourself. They want to put themselves in your thoughts and in your mind, and that you should care for them. It's a sickness. But they don't want you to care for them as they really are. No, that's the whole stunt. You have to be conscious of them, but not as they are, only as they love to be seen. They live through observation by the ones around them, and they want you to live like that too. Augie darling, don't do it. They will make you suffer from what they are. And you don't really matter to them.
Saul BellowHe had come into a view of mutability, and I too could see that one is only ostensibly born to remain in specified limits.
Saul BellowYou never know what forms self-respect will take, especially with people whose rules of life are few.
Saul BellowBut Mimi- her tenderness didn't have an easy visibility. You wondered what it would be, and after what terrible manifestations it would appear.
Saul BellowI don't know how it all at once came to me to talk a lot, tell jokes, kick up, and suddenly have views. When it was time to have them, there was no telling how I picked them from the air.
Saul BellowTo rip off a piece of lover's temper was a pleasure in her deepest vein of enjoyment.
Saul BellowMimi didn't care about secrecy. She led a proclaimed life, and once she got talking she held back nothing.
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