Quotes By Don DeLillo

Rushdie is a hostage.

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.

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

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.

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?

In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic.

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

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

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

I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

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

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

America was and is the immigrant's dream.

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

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.

People will always make comparisons.

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

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

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.

Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies.

It occured to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

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

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?

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.

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.

Hardship makes the world obscure.

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

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

I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation.

There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live.