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.
– Don DeLillo
May the days be aimless. Do not advance action according to a plan.
– Don DeLillo
Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted.
– Don DeLillo
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.
– Don DeLillo
There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.
– Don DeLillo
We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.
– Don DeLillo
There's a connection between the advances that are made in technology and the sense of primitive fear people develop in response to it.
– Don DeLillo
The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
– Don DeLillo
The future belongs to crowds.
– Don DeLillo
People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.
– Don DeLillo
People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power.
– Don DeLillo
Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies.
– Don DeLillo
In the face of technology, everything becomes a little atavistic.
– Don DeLillo
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.
– Don DeLillo
I watch movies occasionally, and I watch documentaries. Virtually nothing else.
– Don DeLillo
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.
– Don DeLillo
I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts.
– Don DeLillo
I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.
– Don DeLillo
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.
– Don DeLillo
Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.