Quote

There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or 'terror in a lonely place', the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind.

Don DeLillo

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Don DeLillo
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: November 20
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Don Delillo
Donald Richard DeLillo
Time
Effort
Panic
Came
Near
Word
Originals
Moment
Original
Moments
Content
Place
Terror
Every
Anxiety
Semantic
Mind
Lonely
Prolonged

More quotes by Don DeLillo

Image
... there was an honesty inherent in bulkiness if it is just the right amount.
Don DeLillo
Image
In these night recitations we create a space between things as we felt them at the time and as we speak them now. This is the space reserved for irony, sympathy and fond amusement, the means by which we rescue ourselves from the past.
Don DeLillo
Image
I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.
Don DeLillo
Image
We commit our crimes at night and reveal ourselves in the high noon of studio lights.
Don DeLillo
Image
What did it mean, the first time, a thinking creature looked deeply into another's eyes? Did it take a hundred thousand years before this happened or it was the first thing they did, transcendingly, the thing that made them higher, made them modern, the gaze that demonstrates we are lonely in our souls?
Don DeLillo
Image
Human existence had to have a deeper source than our own dank fluids. Dank or rank. There had to be a force behind it, a principal being who was and is and ever shall be.
Don DeLillo
Image
Facts are lonely things.
Don DeLillo
Image
I think that the massive, overarching, interconnected systems of technology tend to make us a little insecure, somewhat pliable, and susceptible to half-beliefs.
Don DeLillo
Image
Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.
Don DeLillo
Image
May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan.
Don DeLillo
Image
Sex finds us. Sex sees through us. That's why it's so shattering. It strips us of appearances.
Don DeLillo
Image
To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.
Don DeLillo
Image
The family was an art ... and the dinner table was the place it found expression.
Don DeLillo
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.
Don DeLillo
Image
A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot.
Don DeLillo
Image
Do people still shoot at presidents? I thought there were more stimulating targets.' (20)
Don DeLillo
Image
I understand there are some men who are only half here. Let's not say men. Let's say people. People who are more or less obscure at times.
Don DeLillo