263 Quotes by Mark Helprin

Because there were all kinds of hell – some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high.

You know,” said Al in a daze of hunger and cold, “when you see this, you realize that despite all the crap that goes on in the cities, despite all the words and accusations, the country has balance and momentum. The whole thing is symmetrical and beautiful; it works. The cities are like bulbs on a Christmas tree. They may bum, swell, and shatter, but the green stays green. Look at it,” he said, eyes fixed on the horizon, not unmoved by the motion of the train. “Look at it. It’s alive.

I made a boy’s mistake, common enough, of thinking that real life was knowing many things and many people, living dangerously in faraway places, crossing the sea, or starting a power company on the Columbia River, a steamship line in Bolivia.

If you don’t have compassion you won’t be compelled to help.

One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned and much more than you think on what you have inside you from the beginning.

They move, don’t they? Who do you think sets things to moving? Nothing that moves lacks a soul.

Never will anyone know you better than he who has known you when everything you have has been stripped away.

A young girl, a frailty, simple and true, who had been unable to stand up from the piano and had had to be carried; a girl half his age; a girl who could not shoot a gun, had never been in an oyster house, atop a tower, or under the wharves; a girl hotter always than noon in August; a girl who knew nothing; had thrown him so hard that he would be out of breath forever.

I’ve given myself to you. You may have my body, soul, everything. Time passes, and all I want is the intimacy that slows, defeats. and confounds it. Love, that’s what it is. You’ve always made the mistake that men often make, and carried forward the great fault that mars civilisation, which is that you believe that your philosophy is deeper than love.