Don DeLillo Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• 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

  Waiting, Literature, Ends

  Don DeLillo (2016). “Mao II”, p.34, Pan Macmillan

• 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

  Love, Ghouls, Perception

  1982 Owen Brademas. The Names, ch.4.

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

  Don DeLillo

  Reality, Literature, Sentences

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.82, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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

• The future belongs to crowds.

  Don DeLillo

  Future, Literature, Crowds

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.101, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Don DeLillo

  Power, People, Secret Love

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

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

  Don DeLillo

  Power, People, Literature

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

• 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

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

  Don DeLillo

  Literature, Fantasy, Underestimate

• 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.

  Don DeLillo

  Pain, Ideas, Catholic

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.81, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Don DeLillo

  Literature, Obscure, Feels

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.77, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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

  Photography, Wedding, Writing

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.80, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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

  Independence, Culture, Use

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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

• 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

• America was and is the immigrant's dream.

  Don DeLillo

  Dream, America, Literature

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

  Don DeLillo

  Thinking, Literature, World

  "I don't know America anymore". Interview with Christoph Amend, Georg Diez, perival.com. October 11, 2007.

• 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

  Technology, People, Connections

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.82, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Don DeLillo

  Literature, Moral, Speak

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.82, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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

  Mean, Sound, Looks

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.82, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Don DeLillo

  Ideas, Silence, Literature

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.4, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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

  Narrative Structure, Vision, Literature

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

• 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

  Moving, Thinking, Three

• When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery.

  Don DeLillo

  Trying, Literature, Way

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.75, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Don DeLillo

  Thinking, Childhood, Catholic

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.81, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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