In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.
More Quotes from Don DeLillo:
I think there is a sense of last things in my work that probably comes from a Catholic childhood.Don DeLillo
Thousands stand and chant. Around them in the world, people ride escalators going up and sneak secret glances at the faces coming down. People dangle teabags over hot water in white cups. Cars run silently on the autobahns, streaks of painted light. People sit at desks and stare at office walls. They smell their shirts and drop them in the hamper. People bind themselves into numbered seats and fly across time zones and high cirrus and deep night, knowing there is something they've forgotten to do.
Don DeLillo
I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore.
Don DeLillo
We start our lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. The efforts of a huge and powerful government are brought to bear on a ceremony that will shed the last trace of chaos. If all geos well, if they bring it off, some natural law of perfection is obeyed. The nation is delivered from anxiety, the deceased's life is redeemed, life itself is strengthened, reaffirmed.
Don DeLillo
I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.
Don DeLillo
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.
Don DeLillo
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Madness Quotes, Self QuotesBased on Keywords: distillation, twentieth-century
I was dictating to my mother when I was 5.
Judith Rossner
I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer.
Fred Savage
Human beings the world over need freedom and security that they may be able to realize their full potential.
Aung San Suu Kyi