The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep sense of shame and the desire for redemption through the act of writing.
In this quote, Don DeLillo articulates a struggle with personal shame and a quest for meaning and honor through the written word. He emphasizes the cathartic power of journaling as a means to confront his internal conflicts, seeking to produce something profound that can resonate with the world, even amidst feelings of inadequacy.
In practice
During a workshop on personal growth, one might quote this to emphasize the power of journaling.
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. 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.
Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns about what's going to happen in the afterlife.
Past and future are in the mind only - I am now.
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.
The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.
I know we can't abolish prejudice through laws, but we can set up guidelines for our actions by legislation.
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