Bookplanet: Grand Old Man of letters dies

'Saul Bellow, the Nobel laureate and self-proclaimed historian of society whose fictional heroes - and whose scathing, unrelenting and darkly comic examination of their struggle for meaning - gave new immediacy to the American novel in the second half of the 20th century, died yesterday at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 89.' NY Times obit. Kansas City News. Chicago Trib. Michiko Kakutani. San Fran Gate. Boston Globe. His Nobel acceptance speech.
He wrote many books, some very good, bonked many women, some very beautiful, died laden with honors: what more can a writer want from life? Asked his thoughts on marriage in 1997, Bellow said: "I learned that the sexual revolution is a very bloody affair, like most revolutions."
Other quotes (via Guardian):
On writing: "A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life." "All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac." "I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'" "People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned." "You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write." "We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next."
On America: "California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that." "Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize." "I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture." "Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated." "Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining."
On women: "If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things." "She was what we used to call a suicide blond - dyed by her own hand." On love: "In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries." "A man is only as good as what he loves." "Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."
Cynicisms: "I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side." "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." "Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand." "When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice."
Deep thoughts: "In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves." "There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for." "Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door." "There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever ... money, for instance, or war."