Latest Mark Helprin Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I suppose I could read more fiction, but I haven't moved in that direction. I'd like more time even though I spend six hours a day reading. People say their eyes get tired, but I've never experienced that. In college I used to read 10 hours a day. My wife says I'm obsessive compulsive. She might have a point because when I was an undergrad student we had the required reading list and the suggested reading list. I always read all the suggested reading too.

  Mark Helprin

  Reading, Tired, Eye

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• Really the best way to learn about something is simply to read it and not make a scientific theory of interpretation.

  Mark Helprin

  Way, Interpretation, Theory

  Source: americasfuture.org

• I've always been terribly uninterested in criticism. And one of the reasons, I just thought recently, is that you know there are various schools of criticism that will compete, and one will supercede the other.

  Mark Helprin

  School, Criticism, Reason

  Source: americasfuture.org

• One is attracted to beauty. Beauty is the coordination of things, in such a way, that it is what attracts you. It's almost self-defining.

  Mark Helprin

  Self, Way, Defining

  Source: americasfuture.org

• I am religious by nature, I'm not a nihilist. I don't follow, I don't even know what the tenets of things like deconstructionism are, and all those schools that come up and their way of looking at things that people strive to incorporate into what they write. I don't even know what they are. Because I sense from a distance that I don't want to know. And therefore even if I had no politics, actual politics, my cultural point of view is hopelessly out of date with the modern literary sensibility. Which is nihilistic, and ironic, detached, cool, and cowardly.

  Mark Helprin

  Religious, Distance, Writing

  Source: americasfuture.org

• I follow my own nose. So I read things that are different. People will always say to me, "Have you read Robert S. Bosco's latest novel?" or "Have you read so and so's history of Peru, which is reviewed in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times and has a buzz about it?" I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm like from another planet. I'm a pygmy from the jungle.

  Mark Helprin

  New York, Book, Talking

  Source: americasfuture.org

• Particularly as a Jew, I don't like missionary work. I've had it focused on me, and I don't like it. Let people be what they want to be.

  Mark Helprin

  People, Missionary, Want

  Source: americasfuture.org

• If you know anything about Islamic civilization, or about the contemporary Middle East, about the sociology and the anthropology of the people who live there, and their recent history, and their religion, and their motivation and everything, then you realize that changing Iraq into a democracy is not going to happen. It's just not going to happen.

  Mark Helprin

  Motivation, Islamic, Civilization

  Source: americasfuture.org

• That's what the left is always doing. They have an ideal, and they want people to conform to it. When people don't conform to it, they end up being beaten into the mold. And beaten sometimes hard enough so that if they don't fit, then they kill them. That's what happened in the Soviet Union and China.

  Mark Helprin

  People, Unions, Want

  Source: americasfuture.org

• There's an expression in Yiddish, which is "der gelernte naar" - a "learned fool." You can know a great deal, you can have a Ph.D., and you can still be a total idiot.

  Mark Helprin

  Expression, Fool, Idiot

  Source: americasfuture.org

• I have a particular dislike of human pride. And if you think that you can engineer outcomes, that's a manifestation of pride. Among other things, it's impractical. It just doesn't work. The world doesn't work that way.

  Mark Helprin

  Pride, Thinking, World

  Source: americasfuture.org

• La guerre, la guerre, everything la guerre. That's how I grew up. So for me, it's real. It's not something in the past.

  Mark Helprin

  Real, Past, Grew Up

  Source: americasfuture.org

• World War II is the war that made our world. There's no question about that. The history of all the years in which I will spend my life, every single one, that is the seminal event of the history that we will experience.

  Mark Helprin

  War, Our World, Years

  Source: americasfuture.org

• What I really like to do is to sit quietly and write. All that other stuff is a problem. Publication to reception to negotiation to... everything, it's a problem. And I like to sit outside for long periods of time and just be in the tranquility of nature. That's what I like.

  Mark Helprin

  Writing, Long, Stuff

  Source: americasfuture.org

• I believe that Israel is very likely not to survive, it's not going to last forever, and now there's nothing that someone like me can do about it, in that it's a threat of nuclear or biological or chemical attack.

  Mark Helprin

  Believe, Israel, Forever

  Source: americasfuture.org

• I had a period in my life, maybe a decade or so, in which I was involved in that kind of thing, associating with the elite of various segments of society. It always made me extremely uncomfortable. I couldn't wait to get out of there and change my clothes. The good part about that was getting home and changing into my regular clothes. Taking off the suit and the tie, taking off the tight shoes, and just relaxing. Being away from that stuff. It was stimulating, but I never liked it. I always felt it was a terrible, terrible burden.

  Mark Helprin

  Home, Shoes, Clothes

  Source: americasfuture.org

• I have always thought limousines make me dreadfully uncomfortable, just the way that suits do. When I wear a suit, I feel like ants and termites are crawling all over my body. It's really, really uncomfortable. People put themselves in a kind of prison. It's like the world of the embassies.

  Mark Helprin

  People, World, Body

  Source: americasfuture.org

• We should have absolute control over our borders. If we want cheap labor to depress wages and disempower the unions, then we could have guest workers. But we have to face that issue. What is it that we want to do? Rather than not facing it, and having porous borders, and the effect is that it disempowers the unions.

  Mark Helprin

  Depressing, Should Have, Issues

  Source: americasfuture.org

• Every sovereign country has the right to control its borders, and should. The idea that anyone would sneak over our borders without proper documentation to me is absolutely abhorrent.

  Mark Helprin

  Country, Ideas, Sovereign

  Source: americasfuture.org

• People's position on immigration, once they get "sophisticated," and they rise to the higher levels of commentary or government, it's usually determined solely by economics. And not by anything else.

  Mark Helprin

  Government, People, Levels

  Source: americasfuture.org

• It's very painful to be in debt. I'm the kind of person who would rather almost die than go into debt.

  Mark Helprin

  Debt, Kind, Painful

  Source: americasfuture.org

• Give the money directly to people who work hard. Instead of taking the money from the business and then filtering it through the horror of government programs, which is essentially giving it to social workers who live in Bethesda so they can drive their minivans and vote Democratic. Give them the money, so that they go and talk to the worker who is washing dishes, and they say, "Well, we want to help you, you see." And it would be better to help them by taking the money from that minivan-driving social worker and giving it directly to the guy who is really working hard by washing dishes.

  Mark Helprin

  Hard Work, Government, Giving

  Source: americasfuture.org