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She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years.

Mark Helprin

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Mark Helprin
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: June 28
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Words
Used
Mainly
Ever
Sleeping
Every
Hundreds
Years
Dead
Knew
Sleep
Heard

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.
Mark Helprin
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It was a good speech, but the reaction was due to the fact that politics are madness, and even if one does not know it, a country in electoral season experiences flares of lunacy like the great storms that sometimes march across the golden surface of the sun.
Mark Helprin
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I have to confess that I have so rarely experienced triumph that I cannot claim to know it well enough to judge, but it seems to be at best a momentary joy followed instantly by sadness, and, then, of necessity, by wariness.
Mark Helprin
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Words were all he knew they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-room apartment.
Mark Helprin
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My father ran London Films. He made films like 'The Red Shoes,' 'The Third Man.' And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with him. Also, I went to school with their children.
Mark Helprin
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It's a defining difference, curiosity. I've never known a stupid person who was curious, or a curious person who was stupid.
Mark Helprin
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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.
Mark Helprin
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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.
Mark Helprin
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Because there were all kinds of hell - some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high.
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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No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile.
Mark Helprin
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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.
Mark Helprin
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I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn't get him anything other than a living
Mark Helprin
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We launch our souls from the cannons of art and discipline, and on any one night, hovering over the chimney tops of Europe, halfway to the stars, there are armies of brightly spinning spirits that have risen like fireworks, tethered to the souls of those men and women who, by reflection, mortification, and devotion, effortlessly outdazzle kings.
Mark Helprin
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I have been fighting over commas all my life.
Mark Helprin
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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.
Mark Helprin
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And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.
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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If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.
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