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The human race is intoxicated with narrow victories, for life is a string of them like pearls that hit the floor when the rope breaks, and roll away in perfection and anarchy.

Mark Helprin

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Mark Helprin
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: June 28
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Life
Roll
String
Like
Perfection
Pearls
Victory
Rope
Break
Anarchy
Race
Breaks
Away
Narrow
Human
Strings
Intoxicated
Humans
Floor
Victories

More quotes by Mark Helprin

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I've always been terribly uninterested in criticism. And one of the reasons, I just thought recently, is that you know there are various schools of criticism that will compete, and one will supercede the other.
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I believe that Israel is very likely not to survive, it's not going to last forever, and now there's nothing that someone like me can do about it, in that it's a threat of nuclear or biological or chemical attack.
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La guerre, la guerre, everything la guerre. That's how I grew up. So for me, it's real. It's not something in the past.
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Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.
Mark Helprin
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I have been fighting over commas all my life.
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Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, desperately moved, changed forever.
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Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.
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He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.
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[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.
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World War II is the war that made our world. There's no question about that. The history of all the years in which I will spend my life, every single one, that is the seminal event of the history that we will experience.
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When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.
Mark Helprin
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For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.
Mark Helprin
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What I really like to do is to sit quietly and write. All that other stuff is a problem. Publication to reception to negotiation to... everything, it's a problem. And I like to sit outside for long periods of time and just be in the tranquility of nature. That's what I like.
Mark Helprin
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Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.
Mark Helprin
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One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned and much more than you think on what you have inside you from the beginning. Memoir From Antproof Case
Mark Helprin
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Really the best way to learn about something is simply to read it and not make a scientific theory of interpretation.
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Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking.
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Because there were all kinds of hell - some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high.
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If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.
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To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been.
Mark Helprin