Quote

No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.

Don DeLillo

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Don DeLillo
Age: 87
Born: 1936
Born: November 20
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Don Delillo
Donald Richard DeLillo
Earth
Human
Irony
Humans
Highest
Must
Animal
Life
Dies
Experience
Sense
Form

More quotes by Don DeLillo

Image
Writers, some of us, may tend to see things before other people do, things that are right there but aren't noticed in the way that a writer might notice.
Don DeLillo
Image
Something is always happening, even on the quietest days and deep into the night, if you stand a while and look.
Don DeLillo
Image
A shrewd person would one day start a religion based on coincidence, if he hasn't already, and make a million.
Don DeLillo
Image
The genius of rock music is that it matched the cultural hysteria around it.
Don DeLillo
Image
We commit our crimes at night and reveal ourselves in the high noon of studio lights.
Don DeLillo
Image
I'm a novelist, period. An American novelist.
Don DeLillo
Image
I never wanted to change the world. Norman Mailer wanted to, he set himself the task of changing the consciousness of our age. And I think he came pretty close, in the 1960s, to actually managing to do it. But me? No, no, I never wanted anything like that. I'm not Maileresque.
Don DeLillo
Image
Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.
Don DeLillo
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Coming and going I am leaving. I will go and come. Leaving has come to me. We all, shall all, will all be left. Because I am here and where. And I will go or not or never. And I have seen what I will see. If I am where I will be. Because nothing comes between me.
Don DeLillo
Image
People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it.
Don DeLillo
Image
I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.
Don DeLillo
Image
The dead have a presence.
Don DeLillo
Image
The family is the cradle of the world's misinformation.
Don DeLillo
Image
If an idea seems to find its way towards a stage setting, that's the direction I take. I don't know if I'm trying to achieve anything other than to follow an idea on to the page.
Don DeLillo
Image
When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.
Don DeLillo
Image
Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing
Don DeLillo
Image
When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery.
Don DeLillo
Image
A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.
Don DeLillo