Don DeLillo Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.

  Don DeLillo

  Reality, Bedtime, Dangerous

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.46, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story.

  Don DeLillo

  Epic, Cities, People

  Don DeLillo (2010). “Point Omega”, p.36, Pan Macmillan

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• Why are homosexuals addicted to soap opera? Because our lives are a vivid situation.

  Don DeLillo

  Opera, Vivid, Soap

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• One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language.

  Don DeLillo

  Integrity, Swings, Literature

  Don DeLillo (1992). “Mao II: A Novel”, p.48, Penguin

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• In fiction, I tend to write fairly realistic dialogue-not always, and it tends to vary
  from book to book. But in many books, there is a colloquialism of address. The characters will speak in a quite idiosyncratic way sometimes.

  Don DeLillo

  Book, Writing, Character

  Interview with Martha Lavey, www.steppenwolf.org.

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• I was never either pro-culture or counter-culture. I was in a kind of middle state.

  Don DeLillo

  Counter Culture, Kind, States

  "Intensity of a Plot". Interview with Mark Binelli, www.guernicamag.com. July 17, 2007.

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• In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending. So for much of the period in which I'm writing, I'm waiting to understand what's going to happen next, and how and where it's going to happen. In some cases, fairly early in the process, I do know how a book will end. But most of the time, not at all, and in this particular case, many questions are still unanswered, even though I've been working for months.

  Don DeLillo

  Book, Writing, Waiting

  "Living in dangerous times". Interview with Kevin Nance, articles.chicagotribune.com. October 12, 2012.

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• He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

  Don DeLillo

  Pain, Self, World

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.24, Pan Macmillan

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• You live in a tower that soars to heaven and goes unpunished by God.

  Don DeLillo

  Heaven, Towers, Soar

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.85, Pan Macmillan

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• The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

  Don DeLillo

  Independent, Literature, Influence

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.45, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore.

  Don DeLillo

  Jobs, Writing, Fiction

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.78, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it.

  Don DeLillo

  Art, New York, Air

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.76, Pan Macmillan

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• The family was an art ... and the dinner table was the place it found expression.

  Don DeLillo

  Family, Art, Expression

  Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.685, Pan Macmillan

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• Her death would leave me scattered, talking to chairs and pillows. Don't let us die, I want to cry out to that fifth-century sky ablaze with mystery and spiral light. Let us both live forever, in sickness and health, feebleminded, doddering, toothless, liver-spotted, dim-sighted, hallucinating. Who decides these things? What is out there? Who are you?

  Don DeLillo

  Light, Talking, Sky

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.119, Pan Macmillan

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• There are times when you want to stop working at faith and just be washed in a blowing wind that tells you everything.

  Don DeLillo

  Faith, Wind, Want

  Don DeLillo (2007). “Underworld: A Novel”, p.757, Simon and Schuster

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• [I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. 
He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way he’s carrying a gun. 
This is one of the essential images in American mythology.

  Don DeLillo

  Lonely, Horse, Gun

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• In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

  Don DeLillo

  Editing, Self, Voice

  1982 Owen Brademas. The Names, ch.5.

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• I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language.

  Don DeLillo

  Inspiration, Fiction, Way

  "Q&A: Don DeLillo / It's not as easy as it looks / DeLillo talks about writing plays, watching sports and movies, and defining love and death". Interview with John Freeman, www.sfgate.com. March 5, 2006.

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• In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

  Don DeLillo

  Meaningful, Literature, May

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.84, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Coming and going I am leaving. I will go and come. Leaving has come to me. We all, shall all, will all be left. Because I am here and where. And I will go or not or never. And I have seen what I will see. If I am where I will be. Because nothing comes between me.

  Don DeLillo

  Leaving, Left, Ifs

  Don DeLillo (2001). “The Body Artist: A Novel”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

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• Hardship makes the world obscure.

  Don DeLillo

  Hardship, World, Obscure

  Don DeLillo (2012). “The Names”, p.305, Vintage

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• I think that the massive, overarching, interconnected systems of technology tend to make us a little insecure, somewhat pliable, and susceptible to half-beliefs.

  Don DeLillo

  Insecure, Technology, Thinking

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• Everything's a scandal. Dying's a scandal. But we all do it.

  Don DeLillo

  Dying, Scandal

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.108, Pan Macmillan

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• The future is always a wholeness, a sameness. We're all tall and happy there,' she said. 'This is why the future fails. It always fails. It can never be the cruel happy place we want to make it.

  Don DeLillo

  Want, Failing, Said

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.75, Pan Macmillan

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• War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.

  Don DeLillo

  Country, War, Men

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.286, Pan Macmillan

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