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The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.

Mark Helprin

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Mark Helprin
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: June 28
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Soul
Shelf
Book
Shelves
Hard
Kick
Like
Kicks
Devastate
Finished
Mule
Filled
Mules
Books
Remake
Read
Remakes

More quotes by Mark Helprin

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I have been fighting over commas all my life.
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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
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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.
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The horse could not do without Manhattan. It drew him like a magnet, like a vacuum, like oats, or a mare, or an open, never-ending, tree-lined road.
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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.
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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.
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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
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When faced with something I fear, I tend to eat spaghetti.
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There's an expression in Yiddish, which is der gelernte naar - a learned fool. You can know a great deal, you can have a Ph.D., and you can still be a total idiot.
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Heavy blizzards start as a gentle and persistent snow.
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Whatever I do I've always done not because I want something but to compensate for a loss, to bring about a balance, to create amends, to make things right.
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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.
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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.
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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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That's what the left is always doing. They have an ideal, and they want people to conform to it. When people don't conform to it, they end up being beaten into the mold. And beaten sometimes hard enough so that if they don't fit, then they kill them. That's what happened in the Soviet Union and China.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.
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If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.
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