Quotes by Don DeLillo

“Steffie took my hand and we walked past the fruit bins, an area that extended about forty-five yards along one wall. The bins were arranged diagonally and backed my mirrors that people accidentally...”

“Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like to bag?”

“Do you know why I believe in the novel? It’s a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, s...”

“When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear.”

“What was the barn like before it was photographed?' he said. 'What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions becaus...”

“I have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain but it's enough to make me proud to be an American.”

“When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.”

“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...”

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

“Everything was on television last night”

“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, ...”

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

“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 de...”

“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 te...”

“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”

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

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

“I think fiction rescues history from its confusions.”

“I'm a novelist, period. An American novelist.”

“I am not particularly distressed by the state of fiction or the role of the writer. The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he'll become.”