The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of trusting our own perceptions over external influences like media.
Don Delillo's quote suggests that individuals should not blindly accept information presented through media, such as radio broadcasts, without questioning its veracity. It underscores the significant role of personal experience and empirical evidence in forming our beliefs and opinions, urging us to remain critical thinkers rather than passive consumers of information.
In practice
In a discussion about media influence, one might cite this quote to emphasize the need for critical thinking.
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.
For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.
Let me go: take back thy gift: Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men, Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all? ...Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears, And make me tremble lest a saying learnt, In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true? βThe Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.β - Tithonus
Hours later the blank sheet still stared at me, and I beat my fist against the desk in fury and fustration, striking it so hard my hand bled. That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.
Home is the center of life. It's the wellspring of personhood. It's where we say we're ourselves.
We must add our voices to those who cry out that there is a standard below which we will not allow human beings to live, and that that standard is not at the freezing nor starving point....In a democracy all are responsible.
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