Quotes by Mark Helprin

“If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.”

“A good river is nature's life work in song.”

“When faced with something I fear, I tend to eat spaghetti.”

“As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, belie...”

“He felt as if he were paying for the privilege of music with portions of his life and body. But it was well worth it.”

“Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that w...”

“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.”

“The beauty of truth is that it need not be proclaimed or believed. It skips from soul to soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen it, and someday you will, too.”

“Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come c...”

“No matter what it is, if you dont move your eyes and set the pace yourself, your intellect is sentenced to death. The mind, you see, is like a muscle. For it to remain agile and strong, it must wor...”

“Adversity has its compensations, that in falling, and in failing, we rise. It is as if there is a hand behind us that sets to right all imbalances. Why do you think the saints seldom had the tempor...”

“Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change a man forever.”

“Physical features count little unless they are illumined from within.”

“I think it takes some terrible or great event to fuse two people together without inhibition. Without heat or shock, it can't be done. I believe that's why sexual love, which needn't be, is so inte...”

“I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didnt get him anything other than a living.”

“I read. The more you read, the more the world opens up to you... and the happier you are and more comforted you feel. It's up to you. No you is educated who cannot educate himself.”

“their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.”

“Young Bindo Altovini, looking out from time, made a perfect coalition with the mountains, the sky, and the tall redheaded woman who had bent over just slightly to examine a raging battle that was l...”

“Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You'll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step.”

“Nobody steals books except kleptomaniacs and university students. In most places you can leave a book on the street and come back for in the next day.”