I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

Saul Bellow (1915-2005) Canadian-American writer

“The Art of Fiction: Saul Bellow,” interview by Gordon Lloyd Harper, The Paris Review (Winter 1966)
    (Source)

Reprinted in Gloria Cronin and Ben Siegel, ed., Conversations with Saul Bellow (1994).