The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
People hurried past, the others of the street, endless anonymous, twenty-one lives per second, race-walking in their faces and pigments, sprays of fleetest being.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the rapid pace of urban life and the anonymity of individuals within it.
Don DeLillo's quote captures the essence of modern existence, where individuals are often lost in the hustle and bustle of city life. It evokes a sense of both the vibrancy and the detachment that comes with living in a densely populated environment, highlighting how people can coexist yet remain invisible to one another as they rush through their daily routines.
In practice
In a discussion about the fast pace of modern cities, one might use this quote to illustrate how people often overlook the lives of those around them.
The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.
American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.
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.
[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. β¨He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way heβs carrying a gun. β¨This is one of the essential images in American mythology.
I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.
All the things and events we usually consider as irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration. For a wave, although itself a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point. For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest nor the trough alone, but in their unity.
Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.
Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha". It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.' 'Why not?' 'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
The one thing with writing stories about the rise of fascism is that if you wait long enough, you'll almost certainly be proved right. Fascism is like a hydra - you can cut off its head in the Germany of the '30s and '40s, but it'll still turn up on your back doorstep in a slightly altered guise.
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