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He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

Don DeLillo

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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
Sense
Civilized
Depreciation
Self
Tragic
Weariness
Things
Avoid
Subtlety
World
Took
Mockery
Says
Ambiguity
Natural
Pains
Pain
Vulnerability
History
Irony

More quotes by Don DeLillo

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It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.
Don DeLillo
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The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future.
Don DeLillo
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The dead have a presence.
Don DeLillo
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I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.
Don DeLillo
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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
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I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.
Don DeLillo
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Popular culture is inescapable in the U.S. Why not use it?
Don DeLillo
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A novel determines its own size and shape and I've never tried to stretch an idea beyond the frame and structure it seemed to require.
Don DeLillo
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Facts are lonely things.
Don DeLillo
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Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.
Don DeLillo
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I hate my life. I'm at the point where I want to hear about other people's lives. it's like switching from fiction to biography.
Don DeLillo
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To be a tourist is to escape accountability.
Don DeLillo
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A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.
Don DeLillo
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Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive the universe. This is the natural language of the species.
Don DeLillo
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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
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There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.
Don DeLillo
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We need time to lose interest in things.
Don DeLillo
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There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.
Don DeLillo
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Mirrors and images. Or sex and love. These are two separate systems that we miserably try to link.
Don DeLillo
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I didn’t do anything. I don’t have an explanation, I don’t know why I wanted to write. I did some short stories at that time, but very infrequently. I quit my job just to quit. I didn’t quit my job to write fiction. I just didn’t want to work anymore
Don DeLillo