Don DeLillo Quotes

A Catholic is raised with the idea that he will die any minute now and if he doesn't live his life in a certain way, this death is an introduction to an eternity of pain... view

By: Don DeLillo

I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation... view

By: Don DeLillo

Hardship makes the world obscure... view

By: Don DeLillo

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking... view

By: Don DeLillo

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there... view

By: Don DeLillo

Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom... view

By: Don DeLillo

America was and is the immigrant's dream... view

By: Don DeLillo

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

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

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?.. view

By: Don DeLillo

The language of my books has shaped me as a man... view

By: Don DeLillo

The future belongs to crowds... view

By: Don DeLillo

Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work... view

By: Don DeLillo

Rushdie is a hostage... view

By: Don DeLillo

People will always make comparisons... view

By: Don DeLillo

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence... view

By: Don DeLillo

People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power... view

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies... view

By: Don DeLillo

May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan... view

By: Don DeLillo

There's a connection between the advances that are made in technology and the sense of primitive fear people develop in response to it... view

By: Don DeLillo

In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic... view

By: Don DeLillo

There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live... view

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version... view

By: Don DeLillo

I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence... view

By: Don DeLillo

I've always liked being relatively obscure. I feel that's where I belong, that's where my work belongs... view

By: Don DeLillo

I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else... view

By: Don DeLillo

I think there is a sense of last things in my work that probably comes from a Catholic childhood... view

By: Don DeLillo

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism... view

By: Don DeLillo

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?.. view

By: Don DeLillo

I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts... view

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

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

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo

It occured to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain... view

By: Don DeLillo

There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down... view

By: Don DeLillo

There's never a dearth of reasons to shoot at the President... view

By: Don DeLillo

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... view

By: Don DeLillo