813 Quotes by Don DeLillo

I liked reading books that nearly killed me, books that helped tell me who I was, the son who spites his father by reading such books.

His stillness was commanding. I felt myself getting whiter by the second. What does it mean to become white? How does it feel to see Death in the flesh, come to gather you in? I was scared to the marrow. I was cold and hot, dry and wet, myself and someone else. The fist clenched in my chest. I went to the staircase and sat on the top step, looking into my hands. So much remained. Every word and thing a beadwork of bright creation.

Through history it’s the novelist who has felt affinity for the violent man who lives in the dark. Where are your sympathies? With the colonial police, the occupier, the rich landlord, the corrupt government, the militaristic state? Or with the terrorist?

This is what long journeys are for. To see what’s back behind you, lengthen the view, find the patterns, know the people, consider the significance of one matter or another and then curse yourself or bless yourself or tell yourself, in my father’s situation, that you’ll have a chance to do it all over again, with variations.

How do we stand with others when the things that separate us are imposed at birth, when the separation haunts us and follows us day and night?

I had to wonder whether this interval had any more spread and breadth than just another sequestered moment, bordered by closed doors. We.

Isolation is not a drawback to those who understand that isolation is the point.” I.

Writing is an organized way of thinking. I don’t know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write them.

There’s a dolphin’s brain in my in-box but come see me in forty-eight hours.