Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo
Donald Richard "Don" DeLillois an American novelist, playwright and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, performance art, the Cold War, mathematics, the advent of the digital age, politics, economics, and global terrorism. Initially a well-regarded cult writer, the publication in 1985 of White Noise brought him widespread recognition. It was followed in 1988 by Libra, a bestseller. DeLillo has twice been a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist), won the...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth20 November 1936
CityBronx, NY
Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us.
The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.
I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seamsof being. It passes through you, making and shaping.
Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.
It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.
Sometimes I see something so moving I know I’m not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.
In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.
These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.
Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory.
We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming.
I think my work is influenced by the fact that we're living in dangerous times. If I could put it in a sentence, in fact, my work is about just that: living in dangerous times.
There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.