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Don Delillo Quotes

Powerful Don Delillo for Daily Growth

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

- Don DeLillo

Alone, Doom, Concept, Californians

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

- Don DeLillo

Never, Shoot, Reasons, Dearth

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

- Don DeLillo

Work, Want, Fiction, I Quit

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

- Don DeLillo

Think, Been, I Think, Expressionism

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

- Don DeLillo

Power, People, Theater, Powerless

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

- Don DeLillo

Mystery, Try, Created, Unravel

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

- Don DeLillo

Nature, Rain, Always, Cracking

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

Think, Happen, I Think, Finishes

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

- Don DeLillo

Power, Secret, Largely, Maintaining

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?

- Don DeLillo

Measure, Modern, How, Meaning Of

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

Church, Understand, Saw, Reverend

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

- Don DeLillo

Writing, Me, Form, Concentrated

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

- Don DeLillo

Book, Think, Come, Paperback

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

- Don DeLillo

More, Dangerous, Margins, Ought

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

May, Terror, Influential, Glut

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

Work, Lovely, Margins, Novel

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

- Don DeLillo

Think, Last, I Think, Catholic

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, Die, Eternity, Catholic

Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.

- Don DeLillo

Why, Dangerous, Considered, Societies

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

- Don DeLillo

Movies, Watch, Virtually, Documentaries

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

Deep, Infiltrate, Terror, Structure

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

- Don DeLillo

Study, Something, Years, Slept

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

- Don DeLillo

Work, Always, Belong, Relatively

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.

- Don DeLillo

Want, Need, Other, Afflicted

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

How, Like, Even, Juxtaposition

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

Private, Americana, Use, Intention

Rushdie is a hostage.

- Don DeLillo

Hostage

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

Sense, Made, Primitive, Response

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

Language, Sentence, Poise, Deeper

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

- Don DeLillo

Society, Independent, Stands, Affiliation

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