Language Quotes by Don DeLillo

“Shit is universal no matter which language.”

— Don DeLillo

A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.

— Don DeLillo

The language of my books has shaped me as a man.

— Don DeLillo

“Numbers behave, words do not.”

— Don DeLillo

Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.

— Don DeLillo

He said, "The word for moonlight is moonlight.

— Don DeLillo

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.

— Don DeLillo

“What was there to say? It was a matter of silences, not words.”

— Don DeLillo

“He was a regulator first-class, which was another term for metalworker unskilled.”

— Don DeLillo

“This sentiment was expressed not so much in words and actions as in terrible and articulate sounds”

— Don DeLillo

I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence.

— Don DeLillo

When I work I have a sculptor's sense of the shape of the words I'm making. I use a machine with larger…

— Don DeLillo

True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter…

— Don DeLillo

To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't cling to you the way they do back home. You're…

— Don DeLillo

I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what…

— Don DeLillo

One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as…

— Don DeLillo

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

— Don DeLillo

At night the sky was very near, sprawled in star smoke and gamma cataclysms, but she didn't see it the way she…

— Don DeLillo

Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seamsof being. It passes through you, making and shaping.

— Don DeLillo

“Even as he printed the words, he imagined people reading them, people moved by his loneliness and disappointment, even by his wretched…

— Don DeLillo

“The only private language I know is self-exaggeration. I think I've grown a second self in this room. It's the self-important fool…

— Don DeLillo

I'm very concerned with questions of language. This is what I think of when I think of myself as a writer: I'm…

— Don DeLillo

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world.…

— Don DeLillo

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

First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your…

— Don DeLillo

There's something nearly mystical about certain words and phrases that float through our lives. It's computer mysticism. Words that are computer generated…

— Don DeLillo

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

“Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don’t know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down…

— Don DeLillo

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally…

— Don DeLillo

Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from…

— Don DeLillo

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If…

— Don DeLillo

We feel certain that the extraterrestrial message is a mathematical code of some kind. Probably a number code. Mathematics is the one…

— Don DeLillo

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending. So…

— Don DeLillo

Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they…

— Don DeLillo

If any art form can accommodate contemporary culture, it's the novel. It's so malleable - it can incorporate essays, poetry, film. Maybe…

— Don DeLillo