Don DeLillo

Quotes

1. I've never liked thinking back, going back in time, reviewing the day or the week or the life. To crush and gut. To eviscerate. Power works best when there's no memory attached.

2. 

   Money makes time. It used to be the other way around. Clock time accelerated the rise of capitalism. People stopped thinking about eternity. They began to concentrate on hours, measurable hours, man-hours, using labor more efficiently.

3. 

   "I have become an enigma to myself. So said Saint Augustine. And herein lies my sickness."

4. 

   There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist?

5. 

   Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others. In the old tribes the chief who destroyed more of his property than the other chiefs was the most powerful.

6. 

   Maybe he felt an allegiance to his history. It is one thing to speak around an experience, use it as reference and analogy. But to detail the hellish thing itself, to strangers who will nod and forget, this must seem a betrayal of his pain.

7. 

   Talent is more erotic when it's wasted.

8. 

   When he died he would not end. The world would end.

9. 

   A rat became the unit of currency.

10. 

    There was something about the noise that he did not choose to wish away. It was the tone of some fundamental ache, a lament so old it sounded aboriginal.

11. 

    I can see the scornful humor and pity in what I do sometimes. And I can almost enjoy it on the level of being helpless.

12. 

    People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child's mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life.