Don Delillo Quotes
"I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Life)
"Hardship makes the world obscure."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Hardship, World)
"For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Thinking, Writing)
"Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Truth, End, Waiting, Writer)
"Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Life)
"America was and is the immigrant's dream."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Dream, America)
"American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: American, Writers)
"It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was a private declaration of independence, a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Accident, Culture, First, Independence, Intention)
"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
(Related: Society, Act, May, Repetition, Terror, Writer)
"Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Men, Company, Secrets, Want)
"The modern meaning of life's end-when does it end? How does it end? How should it end? What is the value of life? How do we measure it?"
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Life, End, Meaning, Measure, Value)
"The language of my books has shaped me as a man."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Books, Language, Man)
"The future belongs to crowds."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Crowds, Future)
"Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Nature, Work, Ideas, Cunning, Quiet, Silence)
"Rushdie is a hostage."
- Don DeLillo
"People will always make comparisons."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: People, Comparisons, Will)
"People who are powerless make an open theater of violence."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: People, Open, Theater, Violence)
"People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Power, People)
"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
(Related: Truth, Integrity, Language, Writer)
"Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Power, Act, State)
"May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Action, May)
"There's a connection between the advances that are made in technology and the sense of primitive fear people develop in response to it."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Technology, People, Fear, Connection, Sense)
"In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Technology)
"There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Force, Right, Will, Writer)
"If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Work, Perception, Being, Literature, Writer)
"I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: America, Europe)
"I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Work, Word)
"I've always liked being relatively obscure. I feel that's where I belong, that's where my work belongs."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Work, Being)
"I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Movies, Nothing)
"I think there is a sense of last things in my work that probably comes from a Catholic childhood."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Work, Childhood, Sense)
"I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Movies, Jazz, Writers)
"I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?"
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Beginning, Will)
"I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Communication, Study, Years)
"I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Wedding, Church, Moon)
"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
(Related: Work, Fiction, Job, Want)
"I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what they look like."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Sound, Words)
"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
(Related: Beauty, Inspiration, Fiction, Influence, Language)
"It occured to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: People, Eating)
"There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Time, Fear, First, Rain)
"There's never a dearth of reasons to shoot at the President."
- Don Delillo
(Related: President)
"True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Vision, Consciousness, Deep, Language, Terror, Writers)
"When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Mystery)
"Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Writers)
"The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Society, Influence, Writer)