Mark Helprin Quotes - Page 5

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• When faced with something I fear, I tend to eat spaghetti.

  Mark Helprin

  Fear, Spaghetti

  11 Copy quote

• A tranquil city of good laws, fine architecture, and clean streets is like a classroom of obedient dullards, or a field of gelded bulls - whereas a city of anarchy is a city of promise.

  Mark Helprin

  Law, Cities, Promise

  "Always carry a bin bag" by Jemima Lewis, www.theguardian.com. September 2, 2005.

  13 Copy quote

• I have seen lonely people of advancing age, yet as constant as angels, keeping faith to those they loved who fell in wars that current generations, not having known them, cannot even forget. The sight of them moving hesitantly among the tablets and crosses is enough to break your heart.

  Mark Helprin

  Lonely, War, Moving

  4 Copy quote

• 'Freeing' a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, 'The Garden Party,' while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.

  Mark Helprin

  Party, Garden, Example

  7 Copy quote

• No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile.

  Mark Helprin

  Dark, Guarantees, Worthwhile

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.677, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Why do you think great leaders and great orations are coincident with wars, revolutions, and the founding or ending of governments and states? Common interests then are so clear that speeches are effortlessly drawn, but at present neither the facts nor the consequences are sufficiently clear to make oratory legitimate. This is the kind of war that will wind on and make fools of its partisans and opponents both.

  Mark Helprin

  War, Thinking, Government

  Mark Helprin (2005). “A Soldier of the Great War”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be.

  Mark Helprin

  Dream, Memories, Children

  4 Copy quote

• Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.

  Mark Helprin

  Summer, Country, Travel

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.290, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• Why do people resist [engines, bridges, and cities] so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and historical momentum in an imperfect world, because without imagination we would not have the wherewithal to challenge certainty, and we could never rise above ourselves.

  Mark Helprin

  Imperfect World, Bridges, Cities

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.555, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.

  Mark Helprin

  Animal, Wind, Imagination

  Mark Helprin (1989). “Winter's Tale”, Pocket Books

  4 Copy quote

• And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.

  Mark Helprin

  Beautiful, Liars, Lying

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.571, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  14 Copy quote

• Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.

  Mark Helprin

  Fighting, Justice, World

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.288, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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