Fiction Quotes by Don DeLillo

14 Fiction quotes by Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo’s observations on fiction cut to the core of modern anxiety and media saturation. Though brief, these fourteen quotations offer a sharp lens on how stories reflect and refract the complexities of today’s world.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

Don DeLillo

Image

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

Don DeLillo

Image

There is a set of balances and rhythms to a novel that we can't experience in real life. So I think there…

Don DeLillo

Image

I hate my life. I'm at the point where I want to hear about other people's lives. it's like switching from fiction…

Don DeLillo

Image

I am not particularly distressed by the state of fiction or the role of the writer. The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the…

Don DeLillo

Image

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

Image

I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a…

Don DeLillo

Image

In fiction, I tend to write fairly realistic dialogue-not always, and it tends to vary from book to book. But in many…

Don DeLillo

Image

For me, wellbehaved books with neat plots and worked-out endings seem somewhat quaint in the face of the largely incoherent reality of…

Don DeLillo

Image

I didn’t do anything. I don’t have an explanation, I don’t know why I wanted to write. I did some short stories…

Don DeLillo

Image

I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and…

Don DeLillo

Image

We don't really know how technology will affect narrative. That's the question. See, people used to say that the novel is going…

Don DeLillo

Image

“I have a deep thought for you. Science fiction is just beginning to catch up with the Old Testament. See artificial nitrates…

Don DeLillo

Image

“Once out of the mailroom, I began to learn more about fear. As soon as fear begins to ascend, anatomically, from the…

Don DeLillo

Image

Other authors on Fiction

More by Don DeLillo

“We all know how the thing we secretly fear is not a secret at all but the open and eternal thing that predicts its…

Don DeLillo

Image

Everything is barely weeks. Everything is days. We have minutes to live.

Don DeLillo

Image

The novel is the dream release, the suspension of reality that history needs to escape its own brutal confinements.

Don DeLillo

Image

“As I listened I thought a featureless baggy man was striking me in slow motion with a well-polished stone.”

Don DeLillo

Image

“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…

Don DeLillo

Image

“She is beginning to think it is possible that all creation is a spurt of blank matter that chances to make an emerald planet…

Don DeLillo

Image

“Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief…

Don DeLillo

Image

“The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the…

Don DeLillo

Image

“Grass: I live in a great steel tower that reflects the blazing sun. People catch fire just walking by. The more bodies that pile…

Don DeLillo

Image

“What people discard could make a nation”

Don DeLillo

Image

“Marriage is something we make from available materials. In this sense it’s improvised, it’s almost offhand. Maybe this is why we know so little…

Don DeLillo

Image

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking,…

Don DeLillo

Image

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

Don DeLillo

Image

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…

Don DeLillo

Image

“There is no lie in war or preparation of war that can't be defended. ”

Don DeLillo

Image