The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
The language of my books has shaped me as a man.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The author attributes his personal development to the influence of literature.
In this quote, Don Delillo emphasizes the profound impact that reading and writing have had on his identity and character. He suggests that the language and themes explored in his books have not only shaped his style as a writer but have also significantly influenced his thoughts, values, and understanding of the world.
Themes
LanguageBooksIdentityInfluenceWriting
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club meeting discussing the impact of literature.
More from Don Delillo
All quotes →War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.
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American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
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For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.
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I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.
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[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way he’s carrying a gun. This is one of the essential images in American mythology.
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A book… it’s a world all on its own too. A world made of words, where you live for a while.
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
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Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.
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All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.
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What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.
Dashiell HammettRead
In memoir, you have to be particularly careful not to alienate the reader by making the material seem too lived-in. It mustn't have too much of the smell of yourself, otherwise the reader will be unable to make it her own.
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