Quotes by Don DeLillo

If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things.

Do you know why I believe in the novel? It’s a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy.

When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear.

There were no laptops or handheld devices in class. Ilgauskas didnt exclude them; we did, sort of, unspokenly. Some of us could barely complete a thought without touch pads or scroll buttons, but we understood that high-speed data systems did not belong here. They were an assault on the environment, which was defined by length, width, and depth, with time drawn out, computed in heartbeats.

Why are free spirits always so fucking dumb?

What was the barn like before it was photographed? he said. What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We cant answer these questions because weve read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We cant get outside the aura. Were part of the aura. Were here, were now.

I have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain but its enough to make me proud to be an American.

When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.

Thats why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century--the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports.

The thinness of contemporary life. I can poke my finger through it.

Everything was on television last night

Thats the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.

In the countryside he heard horns and drums and followed the sound to a temple of granite and marble set in a compound that included shrines and incense stalls, people squatting against the walls, beggars, touts, flower-sellers, those who watch over your shoes for a couple of weightless coins.

This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track.

How many times do two people have to fuck before one of them deserves to die? _Eric Packer

Ordinary moments make the life. This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together. No leaps or falls. I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am. What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever. I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat. Define coat, I tell myself. Define time, define space.

The vast and terrible depth.“Of course,” he said.“The inexhaustibility.”“I understand.”“The whole huge nameless thing.”“Yes, absolutely.”“The massive darkness.”“Certainly, certainly.”“The whole terrible endless hugeness.”“I know exactly what you mean.

She was a voice with a body as afterthought, a wry smile that sailed through heavy traffic. Give her a history and shed disappear.Eric Packer about Vija Kinski

Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.

The view is endlessly fulfilling. It is like the answer to a lifetime of questions and vague cravings.