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Being Called A 'bad Citizen' Is A Compliment To A Novelist, At Least To My Mind. That's Exactly What We Ought To Do.
-Don DeLillo
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Being Called A 'bad

Don DeLillo
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Being Called A 'bad Citizen' Is A Compliment To A Novelist, At Least To My Mind. That's Exactly What We Ought To Do.

Understanding the Quote: "being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at..."

This quote by Don DeLillo reflects deeply on the theme of mind. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Mind, Novelists, Citizens, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Don DeLillo interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is celebrated for insightful thoughts on mind and novelists. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Mind
Novelists
Citizens
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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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This Is The Whole Point Of Technology. It Creates An Appetite For Immortality On The One Hand. It Threatens Universal Extinction On The Other. Technology Is Lust Removed From Nature. - Murray (wn 285)
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The Language Of My Books Has Shaped Me As A Man.
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When I Work, I'm Just Translating The World Around Me In What Seems To Be Straightforward Terms. For My Readers, This Is Sometimes A Vision That's Not Familiar. But I'm Not Trying To Manipulate Reality. This Is Just What I See And Hear.
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There Is No Lie In War Or Preparation Of War That Can't Be Defended.
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Perhaps We've Invented Conspiracies For Our Own Psychic Well-being, To Heal Ourselves.
Psychics
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...because What's The Meaning Of Doing Dishes If You're Not Driven By Something Beyond Necessity.
Driven
Dishes
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You Gave Yourself Away, Word By Word, Every Time You Opened Your Trap To Speak.
Speak
Traps
Something Lurked Inside The Truth.
Just Because It's On The Radio Doesn't Mean We Have To Suspend Belief In The Evidence Of Our Senses.
Mean
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War Is The Form Nostalgia Takes When Men Are Hard-pressed To Say Something Good About Their Country.
Country
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I've Come To Think Of Europe As A Hardcover Book, America As The Paperback Version.
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When He Died He Would Not End. The World Would End.
World
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People Think About Who They Are In The Stillest Hour Of The Night.
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You Shout Because It Makes You Brave Or You Want To Announce Your Recklessness.
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I Think It's Only In A Crisis That Americans See Other People. It Has To Be An American Crisis, Of Course. If Two Countries Fight That Do Not Supply The Americans With Some Precious Commodity, Then The Education Of The Public Does Not Take Place. But When The Dictator Falls, When The Oil Is Threatened, Then You Turn On The Television And They Tell You Where The Country Is, What The Language Is, How To Pronounce The Names Of The Leaders, What The Religion Is All About, And Maybe You Can Cut Out Recipes In The Newspaper Of Persian Dishes.
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Writing Is A Form Of Personal Freedom. It Frees Us From The Mass Identity We See In The Making All Around Us. In The End, Writers Will Write Not To Be Outlaw Heroes Of Some Underculture But Mainly To Save Themselves, To Survive As Individuals.
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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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A Photograph Is A Universe Of Dots. The Grain, The Halide, The Little Silver Things Clumped In The Emulsion. Once You Get Inside A Dot, You Gain Access To Hidden Information, You Slide Into The Smallest Event. This Is What Technology Does. It Peels Back The Shadows And Redeems The Dazed And Rumbling Past. It Makes Reality Come True.
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I Think Fiction Comes From Everything You've Ever Done, And Said, And Dreamed, And Imagined. It Comes From Everything You've Read And Haven't Read... I Think My Work Comes Out Of The Culture Of The World Around Me. I Think That's Where My Language Comes From.
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In A Crisis The True Facts Are Whatever Other People Say They Are.
People
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Ecology Is Boring For The Same Reason That Destruction Is Fun.
Fun
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My Attitudes Aren't Directed Toward Characters At All. I Don't Feel Sympathetic Toward Some Characters, Unsympathetic Toward Others. I Don't Love Some Characters, Feel Contempt For Others. They Have Attitudes; I Don't.
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There Were Moments When She Wasn't Talking So Much As Fading Into Time, Dropping Back Into Some Funnelled Stretch Of Recent Past.
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People Stress The Violence. That's The Smallest Part Of It. Football Is Brutal Only From A Distance. In The Middle Of It There's A Calm, A Tranquility. The Players Accept Pain. There's A Sense Of Order Even At The End Of A Running Play With Bodies Strewn Everywhere. When The Systems Interlock, There's A Satisfaction To The Game That Can't Be Duplicated. There's A Harmony.
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The Force Of A Death Should Be Enormous But How Can You Know What Kind Of Man You've Killed Or Who Was The Braver And Stronger If You Have To Peer Through Layers Of Glass That Deliver The Image But Obscure The Meaning Of The Act? War Has A Conscience Or It's Ordinary Murder.
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Be Willing To Die For Your Beliefs, Or Computer Printouts Of Your Beliefs.
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The Genius Of Rock Music Is That It Matched The Cultural Hysteria Around It.
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He Took Pains To Avoid Self-depreciation, Self-mockery, Ambiguity, Irony, Subtlety, Vulnerability, A Civilized World-weariness And A Tragic Sense Of History--the Very Things, He Says, That Are Most Natural To Him.
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[i]n The American Soul There Is A Lonely Individual Standing In A Vast Landscape. 
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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.
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How Many Beginnings Before You See The Lies In Your Excitement?
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A Dead Afternoon In A Dark Bar Was Not The Worst Of Fates.
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If I Were A Writer, 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. Lovely.
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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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They Passed Out Of The Shade Beneath The Eaves And Flew Into Sunglare And Silence And It Was An Action She Only Partly Saw, Elusive And Mutely Beautiful, The Birds So Sunstruck They Were Consumed By Light, Disembodied, Turned Into Something Sheer And Fleet And Scatter-bright.
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Dying Was Just An Extended Version Of Ash Wednesday.
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Freud Is Finished, Einstein's Next.
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Finished
I Think A Playwright Realizes After He Finishes Working On The Script That This Is Only The Beginning. What Will Happen When It Moves Into Three Dimensions?
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Life Is
Written
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Dangerous
Subjects
Felt
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World
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Way
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Football
Thinking
Past
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Shapes
Size
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Shining
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Believe
Men
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There's Never A Dearth Of Reasons To Shoot At The President.
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Reason
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Errors
Stupidity
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Insanity
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Reality
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Writing
Reflection
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World
Way
That's What In Theory Differentiates A Writer From Everyone Else. You See And Hear More Clearly.
Theory
Differentiate
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World
Changing The World
Wanted
Coming And Going I Am Leaving. I Will Go And Come. Leaving Has Come To Me. We All, Shall All, Will All Be Left. Because I Am Here And Where. And I Will Go Or Not Or Never. And I Have Seen What I Will See. If I Am Where I Will Be. Because Nothing Comes Between Me.
Leaving
Left
Ifs
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Two
People
Television
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Real
Long
Dumb
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Thinking
Literature
World
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Hard
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Memories
Years
Distracted
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Bedtime
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Larger Than Life
A Writer Takes Earnest Measures To Secure His Solitude And Then Finds Endless Ways To Squander It.
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Way
Endless
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Facts
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Years
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America
Literature
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Soul
Want
Silver
There's Something Nearly Mystical About Certain Words And Phrases That Float Through Our Lives. It's Computer Mysticism. Words That Are Computer Generated To Be Used On Products That Might Be Sold Anywhere From Japan To Denmark - Words Devised To Be Pronounceable In A Hundred Languages. And When You Detach One Of These Words From The Product It Was Designed To Serve, The Words Acquires A Chantlike Quality.
Japan
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Phrases
Look At Those Numbers Running. 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.
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Men
Thinking
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Coincidence
Persons
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Murder
Effects
The Term Itself--my Life--is A Desperate Overstatement.
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Desperate
Term
We Feel Certain That The Extraterrestrial Message Is A Mathematical Code Of Some Kind. Probably A Number Code. Mathematics Is The One Language We Might Conceivably Have In Common With Other Forms Of Intelligent Life In The Universe. As I Understand It, There Is No Reality More Independent Of Our Perception And More True To Itself Than Mathematical Reality.
Independent
Intelligent
Reality
Past, Present And Future Are Not Amenities Of Language. Time Unfolds Into The Seamsof Being. It Passes Through You, Making And Shaping.
Past
Language
Amenities
Everything I've Stated May Prove To Be Total Poppycock.... Perhaps Time Will Tell. Perhaps Time Will Do Nothing Of The Kind.
May
Kind
Time Will Tell
If You Know You're Worth Nothing, Only A Gamble With Death Can Gratify Your Vanity.
Vanity
Gamble
Knows
Everyone Who Does Not Live In Berlin Lives In Brooklyn Now.
Doe
Brooklyn
Berlin
It Was Only When I Found Myself Writing Things I Didn't Realise I Knew That I Said, 'i'm A Writer Now.'
Writing
Found
Said
There Are Times When You Want To Stop Working At Faith And Just Be Washed In A Blowing Wind That Tells You Everything.
Faith
Wind
Want
The More Things I Threw Away, The More I Found.
Found
Writing Is A Concentrated Form Of Thinking...a Young Writer Sees That With Words He Can Place Himself More Clearly Into The World. Words On A Page, That's All It Takes To Help Him Separate Himself From The Forces Around Him, Streets And People And Pressures And Feelings. He Learns To Think About These Things, To Ride His Own Sentences Into New Perceptions.
Writing
Thinking
People
Being Called A 'bad Citizen' Is A Compliment To A Novelist, At Least To My Mind. That's Exactly What We Ought To Do.
Mind
Novelists
Citizens
We're The Last Billionth Of A Second In The Evolution Of Matter.
Matter
Lasts
Evolution
We Don't Really Know How Technology Will Affect Narrative. That's The Question. See, People Used To Say That The Novel Is Going To Die, But They Would Never Say That Movies Will Die With It, When In Fact All Forms Depend On The Narrative. I Think If One Of Them Fails, The Others Are Going To Fail As Well. Maybe This Will Happen To Both Forms, And Maybe Movies Will Take A Totally Different Direction With Fiction.
Technology
Thinking
People
It's True That Some Of Us Become Better Writers By Living Long Enough. But This Is Also How We Become Worse Writers. The Trick Is To Die In Between.
Long
Enough
Tricks
Days Like This. I Look At You And Feel Electric. Tell Me You Don't Feel It Too."_eric Packer
Days Like This
Looks
Packers
Bloomberg Weighed Three Hundred Pounds. This Itself Was Historical. I Revered His Weight. It Was An Affirmation Of Humanity's Reckless Potential; It Went Beyond Legend And Returned Through Mist To The Lovely Folly Of History. To Weigh Three Hundred Pounds. What Devout Vulgarity.
Humanity
Historical
Lovely
Why Is It So Hard To Be Serious, So Easy To Be Too Serious?
Serious
Easy
Hard
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Fiction
Stories
World
Prayer Is A Practical Strategy, The Gaining Of Temporal Advantage In The Capital Markets Of Sin And Remission.
Prayer
Sin
Strategy
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Noise
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.
Roles
Fiction
States
I Felt Myself Getting Whiter... What Does It Mean To Become White? How Does It Feel To See Death In The Flesh, Come To Gather You In?
Mean
White
Doe
I've Never Made An Outline For Any Novel That I've Written. Never.
Made
Novel
Written
That's The World Out There, Little Green Apples And Infectious Disease.
Apples
World
Disease
A Writer Decides To Follow Some Ideas And Not Others For Reasons That Aren't Always Clear To Him. It's Often A Matter Of Intuition.
Ideas
Intuition
Matter
I Felt Joyce Was An Influence On My Fiction, But In A Very General Way, As A Kind Of Inspiration And A Model For The Beauty Of Language.
Inspiration
Fiction
Way
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.
Lonely
Sadness
Years
It's Healthier To Reject Certain Cautions Than Fall In Line.
Fall
Lines
Certain
I Watch Movies Occasionally, And I Watch Documentaries. Virtually Nothing Else.
Watches
Documentaries
Watch Movie
In A Repressive Society, A Writer Can Be Deeply Influential, But In A Society That's Filled With Glut And Repetition And Endless Consumption, The Act Of Terror May Be The Only Meaningful Act.
Meaningful
Literature
May
The Future Is Always A Wholeness, A Sameness. We're All Tall And Happy There,' She Said. 'this Is Why The Future Fails. It Always Fails. It Can Never Be The Cruel Happy Place We Want To Make It.
Want
Failing
Said
Say Heat. Say Wet Between My Legs. Say Legs. Seriously, I Want You To. Stockings. Whisper It. The Word Is Meant To Be Whispered.
Legs
Want
Heat
I Slept For Four Years. I Didn't Study Much Of Anything. I Majored In Something Called Communication Arts.
Art
Communication
Reality
Fame And Secrecy Are The High And Low Ends Of The Same Fascination.
Fascination
Fame
Secrecy
I Was Always Younger Than Anyone Around Me. One Day It Began To Change.
One Day
One Truth Is The Swing Of The Sentence, The Beat And Poise, But Down Deeper It's The Integrity Of The Writer As He Matches With The Language.
Integrity
Swings
Literature
It's Impossible To Write About The Kennedy Assassination And Its Aftermath Without Taking Note Of Twenty-five Years Of Paranoia Which Has Collected Around That Event.
Writing
Years
Twenties
Film Is More Than The Twentieth-century Art. It's Another Part Of The Twentieth-century Mind. It's The World Seen From Inside. We've Come To A Certain Point In The History Of Film. If A Thing Can Be Filmed, The Film Is Implied In The Thing Itself. This Is Where We Are. The Twentieth Century Is On Film. You Have To Ask Yourself If There's Anything About Us More Important Than The Fact That We're Constantly On Film, Constantly Watching Ourselves.
Art
Mind
Important
Out Of Some Persistent Sense Of Large-scale Ruin, We Kept Inventing Hope.
Ruins
Scales
Persistent
Certainly I've Never Tried To Imagine What The Future Will Hold. It's A Hopeless Endeavor To Try To Do Such A Thing.
Trying
Hopeless
Imagine
Mirrors And Images. Or Sex And Love. These Are Two Separate Systems That We Miserably Try To Link.
Love
Sex
Mirrors
Writing Is A Concentrated Form Of Thinking.
Writing
Thinking
Form
The Figure Of The Gunman In The Window Was Inextricable From The Victim And His History. This Sustained Oswald In His Cell. It Gave Him What He Needed To Live. The More Time He Spent In A Cell, The Stronger He Would Get. Everybody Knew Who He Was Now.
Cells
History
Stronger
You Live In A Tower That Soars To Heaven And Goes Unpunished By God.
Heaven
Towers
Soar
Because Friends Have To Be Brutally Honest With Each Other. I'd Feel Terrible If I Didn't Tell You What I Was Thinking, Especially At A Time Like This
Honesty
Thinking
Terrible
People In Free Societies Don't Have To Fear The Pathology Of The State. We Create Our Own Frenzy, Our Own Mass Convulsions, Driven By Thinking Machines That We Have No Final Authority Over. The Frenzy Is Barely Noticeable Most Of The Time. It's Simply How We Live.
Thinking
People
Finals
Rushdie Is A Hostage.
Rushdie
Hostage
The Writer Is The Person Who Stands Outside Society, Independent Of Affiliation And Independent Of Influence.
Independent
Literature
Influence
Murray Said, ´i Don´t Trust Anybody´s Nostalgia But My Own. Nostalgia Is A Product Of Dissatisfaction And Rage. It´s A Settling Of Grievances Between The Present And The Past. The More Powerful The Nostalgia, The Closer You Come To Violence. War Is The Form Nostalgia Takes When Men Are Hard-pressed To Say Something Good About Their Country.´
Country
Powerful
War
He Wanted Paper And Something To Write With, Some Way To Sustain A Thought, To Place It In The World.
Writing
World
Paper
Doesn't Seem Quite Real. It's Not Meaningful. I Can't Quite Imagine Myself Being 73. That's The Age My Father Was! [laughter.] How Can I Be His Age? It's Weird.
Meaningful
Laughter
Father
Terror Is Now The World Narrative, Unquestionably. When Those Two Buildings Were Struck, And When They Collapsed, It Was, In Effect, An Extraordinary Blow To Consciousness, And It Changed Everything.
Blow
Two
World
There Is A World Inside The World.
World
The World Is Shrinking Into A Kind Of Technological Funnel. I Think People Are Drawn Into Their Technological Devices, And This Becomes A Kind Of Subjective Universe, Into Which Much Of The Rest Of The World Simply Does Not Enter.
Thinking
People
Doe
I Think That The Massive, Overarching, Interconnected Systems Of Technology Tend To Make Us A Little Insecure, Somewhat Pliable, And Susceptible To Half-beliefs.
Insecure
Technology
Thinking
One Of My Earliest Memories As A Reader - I Don't Know How Old I Was, Quite Young - Was A Poem Of His, Called "fog," And I Remember The First Verse, "the Fog Comes / On Little Cat Feet".
Memories
Cat
Remember
To Be A Tourist Is To Escape Accountability.
Accountability
Tourists
When Birds Look Into Houses, What Impossible Worlds They See.
House
Bird
Looks
Even When You Self-destruct, You Want To Fail More, Lose More, Die More Than Others, Stink More Than Others.
Self
Want
Failing
Every Sentence Has A Truth Waiting At The End Of It And The Writer Learns How To Know It When He Finally Gets There.
Waiting
Literature
Ends
These Are The Days After. Everything Now Is Measured By After.
Holes Are Interesting. There Are Books About Holes.
Book
Interesting
Holes
In Our World We Sleep And Eat The Image And Pray To It And Wear It Too.
Sleep
Our World
World
A Person Rises On A Word And Falls On A Syllable.
Fall
Persons
Syllables
It Frequently Happens That I Begin A Novel With Just A Visual Image Of Something, A Vague Sense Of People In Three Dimensional Space.
Space
People
Three
He Said, "the Word For Moonlight Is Moonlight.
Moonlight
Said
We Need Time To Lose Interest In Things.
Needs
Interest
Time Of Need
All Plots Tend To Move Deathward. This Is The Nature Of Plots.
Moving
Plot
It's No Accident That My First Novel Was Called Americana. This Was A Private Declaration Of Independence, A Statement Of My Intention To Use The Whole Picture, The Whole Culture.
Independence
Culture
Use
Brilliant People Never Think Of The Lives They Smash, Being Brilliant.
Thinking
People
Brilliant
There Is A Set Of Balances And Rhythms To A Novel That We Can't Experience In Real Life. So I Think There Is A Sense In Which Fiction Can Rescue History From Confusion.
Real
Thinking
Confusion
I've Always Seen Myself In Sentences. I Begin To Recognize Myself, Word By Word, As I Work Through A Sentence.
Reality
Literature
Sentences
And What's The Point Of Waking Up In The Morning If You Don't Try To Match The Enormousness Of The Known Forces In The World With Something Powerful In Your Own Life?
Morning
Powerful
Trying
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