Don DeLillo: Quotes about life

Don DeLillo is American novelist, playwright and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Don DeLillo: 202 quotes4 likes

“California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

“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.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

“It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

“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”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

“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.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

“Some people are larger than life. Hitler is larger than death.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

“I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.”

Don DeLillo Mao II

Part 1, Ch. 3
Source: Mao II (1991)
Context: There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists... Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

“Everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rushing around somewhere in your brain.”

Don DeLillo

Source: Don DeLillo's White Noise

“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 works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

“Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)