Don Delillo Quotes

That's why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century--the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports.

~ Don Delillo

The thinness of contemporary life. I can poke my finger through it.

~ Don Delillo

Everything was on television last night

~ Don Delillo

That's the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.

~ Don Delillo

In the countryside he heard horns and drums and followed the sound to a temple of granite and marble set in a compound that included shrines and incense stalls, people squatting against the walls, beggars, touts, flower-sellers, those who watch over your shoes for a couple of weightless coins.

~ Don Delillo

This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track.

~ Don Delillo

How many times do two people have to fuck before one of them deserves to die? _Eric Packer

~ Don Delillo

Ordinary moments make the life. This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together. No leaps or falls. I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am. What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever. I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat. Define coat, I tell myself. Define time, define space.

~ Don Delillo

The vast and terrible depth.“Of course,” he said.“The inexhaustibility.”“I understand.”“The whole huge nameless thing.”“Yes, absolutely.”“The massive darkness.”“Certainly, certainly.”“The whole terrible endless hugeness.”“I know exactly what you mean.

~ Don Delillo

She was a voice with a body as afterthought, a wry smile that sailed through heavy traffic. Give her a history and she'd disappear.Eric Packer about Vija Kinski

~ Don Delillo

Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.

~ Don Delillo

The view is endlessly fulfilling. It is like the answer to a lifetime of questions and vague cravings.

~ Don Delillo

Vanity is a defensive quality. it contains an element of fear.

~ Don Delillo

I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.

~ Don Delillo

There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.

~ Don Delillo

It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was a private declaration of independence, a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture.

~ Don Delillo

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

~ Don Delillo

People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power.

~ Don Delillo

I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

~ Don Delillo

The future belongs to crowds.

~ Don Delillo