Mark Helprin Quotes - Page 3

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• 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

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• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him.

  Mark Helprin

  Beautiful, Hands, Play

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.433, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  6 Copy quote

• Whatever I do I've always done not because I want something but to compensate for a loss, to bring about a balance, to create amends, to make things right.

  Mark Helprin

  Loss, Want Something, Balance

  Mark Helprin (2007). “Memoir from Antproof Case”, p.522, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light.

  Mark Helprin

  Stars, Dark, Light

  14 Copy quote

• They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.

  Mark Helprin

  Dream, Just A Dream

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.208, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

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• ...I returned to walking up the mountain, and there, in the dim asexual beauty of reddening dawns and skies that firmed to blue, I discovered my real and appropriate strengths.

  Mark Helprin

  Strength, Nature, Real

  Mark Helprin (2007). “Memoir from Antproof Case”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• He felt as if he were paying for the privilege of music with portions of his life and body. But it was well worth it.

  Mark Helprin

  Body, Privilege, Wells

  Mark Helprin (2017). “Ellis Island and Other Stories”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have been fighting over commas all my life.

  Mark Helprin

  Fighting, Has Beens

  "Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto". Book by Mark Helprin, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 15, 2009.

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• She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years.

  Mark Helprin

  Sleep, Years, Used

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.238, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• [When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.

  Mark Helprin

  Crazy, Real, Book

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• From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street.

  Mark Helprin

  Song, Long, Political

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• Who said that justice is what you imagine? Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence? What you are talking about is common sense, not justice. Justice is higher and not as easy to understand - until it presents itself in unmistakable splendor. The design of which I speak is far above our understanding. But we can sometimes feel its presence.

  Mark Helprin

  Talking, Long, Common Sense

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.178, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

  Mark Helprin

  Children, Growing Up, Odds

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• Not surprisingly, he began to sing, and because no one in the world could hear him, and he sang without inhibition, he sang well.

  Mark Helprin

  World, Wells, Inhibitions

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.291, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.

  Mark Helprin

  Energy, Matter, Proportion

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.508, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.

  Mark Helprin

  Grace, Fiction, Pages

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• The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk.

  Mark Helprin

  New York, Careers, People

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• 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

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• 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

  4 Copy quote

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