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e53eede
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Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.
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Don DeLillo |
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167ab00
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How I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature.
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liberation
novel
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Don DeLillo |
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d4819ac
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How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each ..
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Don DeLillo |
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93561db
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No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.
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Don DeLillo |
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a9e2684
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The future belongs to crowds.
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Don DeLillo |
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9f10695
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I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
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Don DeLillo |
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a5edee3
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California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.
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lifestyle
california
society
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Don DeLillo |
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2a23ec4
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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?
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Don DeLillo |
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4f4948e
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If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things that others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.
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Don DeLillo |
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5214976
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The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear.
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Don DeLillo |
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d50463c
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He wanted to fuck her loudly on a hard bed with rain beating on the windows.
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Don DeLillo |
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389d755
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The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.
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Don DeLillo |
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975cc55
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It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.
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Don DeLillo |
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176b289
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All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots.
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Don DeLillo |
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bc7f410
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It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.
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Don DeLillo |
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7f81639
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Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others.
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Don DeLillo |
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9ffb0a9
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The family is the cradle of the world's misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process w..
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hostile-facts
white-noise
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Don DeLillo |
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8a340df
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When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.
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numbers
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Don DeLillo |
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4fa90ae
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We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras;..
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photography
humor
satire
don-delillo
white-noise
tourism
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Don DeLillo |
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62800b7
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We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras;..
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photography
humor
satire
don-delillo
white-noise
tourism
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Don DeLillo |
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c7dee2a
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Facts are lonely things
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Don DeLillo |
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2fa29c8
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Talent is more erotic when it's wasted.
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Don DeLillo |
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902782d
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That's why people take vacations. No to relax or find excitement or see new places. To escape the death that exists in routine things.
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Don DeLillo |
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95b17ea
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Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive the universe. This is the natural language of the species.
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Don DeLillo |
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ecf70ae
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Everything is barely weeks. Everything is days. We have minutes to live.
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Don DeLillo |
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4c351be
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He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.
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Don DeLillo |
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a043f74
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It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams
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Don DeLillo |
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27066ee
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What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes from computer to computer. It changes and grows every second of every day. But nobody actually knows anything.
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Don DeLillo |
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0802998
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You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.
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others
privacy
secrets
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Don DeLillo |
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527c7fc
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Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing
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Don DeLillo |
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e924aae
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The nonbelievers need the believers. They are desperate to have someone believe." "As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe...Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes."
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Don DeLillo |
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71aba02
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He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it.
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Don DeLillo |
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faee03e
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Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.
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Don DeLillo |
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ec2e1bf
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A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.
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Don DeLillo |
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981ed58
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These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.
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Don DeLillo |
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036d208
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I don't want your candor. I want your soul in a silver thimble.
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Don DeLillo |
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008c537
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Insanity's so personal. It's hard to know who shares our secrets.
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Don DeLillo |
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cb16e3e
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It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.
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Don DeLillo |
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ee3b935
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Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?
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Don DeLillo |
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236ee79
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When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.
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metaphor
the-body-artist
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Don DeLillo |
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8d2ad1b
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Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.
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Don DeLillo |
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303ce22
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I long for the days of disorder. I want them back, the days when I was alive on the earth, rippling in the quick of my skin, heedless and real. I was dumb-muscled and angry and real. This is what I long for, the breach of peace, the days of disarray when I walked real streets and did things slap-bang and felt angry and ready all the time, a danger to others and a distant mystery to myself.
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Don DeLillo |
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56e2b65
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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.
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Don DeLillo |
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5c76a70
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Let's enjoy the aimless days while we still can.
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Don DeLillo |