All Mark Helprin Quotes
- As the clockwork of the millennia moved a notch in front of their eyes, it had taken their thoughts from small things and reminded them… Clockwork
- As it somehow always manages before the winter solstice, but never after, the early darkness was cheerful and promising, even for those who had nothing. Always Manages
- Whatever I do I've always done not because I want something but to compensate for a loss, to bring about a balance, to create amends,… Always Done
- A good river is nature's life work in song. Good
- Why do you think great leaders and great orations are coincident with wars, revolutions, and the founding or ending of governments and states? Common interests… Both
- You’ll join me sooner than you know in a place with . . . no illusions, where the truth is the only architecture, the only… Architecture
- To see the beauty of the world is to put your hands on lines that run uninterrupted through life and through death. Touching them is… Act
- We launch our souls from the cannons of art and discipline, and on any one night, hovering over the chimney tops of Europe, halfway to… Any
- He knew very well that love could be like the most beautiful singing, that it could make death inconsequential, that it existed in forms so… Absence
- The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had… Book
- Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the… Across
- [When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he… Always Reading
- Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given,… Awe
- Why do people resist [engines, bridges, and cities] so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and… Bridges
- Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it… Art
- They gave themselves up to the stars the way swimmers can surrender to the waves, and the stars took them without resistance. Gave
- One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned and much more than you think on… Based
- He could say nothing. He had no right to be there, he had already been profoundly changed, he was no good at small talk, she… Been
- their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals. Animal
- When faced with something I fear, I tend to eat spaghetti. Eat
- and even when I was broken the way sometimes one can be broken, and even though I had fallen, I found upon arising that I… Arisen
- For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone. Alone
- The horse could not do without Manhattan. It drew him like a magnet, like a vacuum, like oats, or a mare, or an open, never-ending,… Drew
- They were dancing around the fountain, arm in arm, in an old Dutch dance, their cheeks touching, their hands entwined. They had no music; they… Arm
- Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth… Armies