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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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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
Life
Culture
Territory
Knots
Used
Terrorist
Novelist
Human
Curious
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Humans
Inner
Bomb
Gunmen
Years
Writers
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More quotes by Don DeLillo

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There are two categories of writers, it could be said: The author who is just a voice, and the one who is also creating a picture. I belong to the latter, because I have an acute visual sense.
Don DeLillo
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The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
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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If you know you're worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.
Don DeLillo
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In cities no one notices specific dying. Dying is a quality of the air. It's everywhere and nowhere.
Don DeLillo
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Ecology is boring for the same reason that destruction is fun.
Don DeLillo
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In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.
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
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When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery.
Don DeLillo
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And what's the point of waking up in the morning if you don't try to match the enormousness of the known forces in the world with something powerful in your own life?
Don DeLillo
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Off-camera lives are unverifiable.
Don DeLillo
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May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan.
Don DeLillo
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I would never write in response to what I believe the public wanted or needed.
Don DeLillo
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Pain is just another form of information.
Don DeLillo
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Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.
Don DeLillo
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Writing is a concentrated form of thinking.
Don DeLillo
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My attitudes aren't directed toward characters at all. I don't feel sympathetic toward some characters, unsympathetic toward others. I don't love some characters, feel contempt for others. They have attitudes I don't.
Don DeLillo
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Everything I've stated may prove to be total poppycock.... Perhaps time will tell. Perhaps time will do nothing of the kind.
Don DeLillo
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A writer decides to follow some ideas and not others for reasons that aren't always clear to him. It's often a matter of intuition.
Don DeLillo
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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.
Don DeLillo