The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
History was not a matter of missing minutes on the tape. I did not stand helpless before it. I hewed to the texture of collected knowledge, took faith from the solid and availing stuff of our experience. Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood -- read the speeches of Mussolini -- at least we've known the thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation. (82)
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of collective experience and knowledge in understanding history rather than relying on fragmented or misleading information.
Don Delillo's quote reflects on the nature of history as a collective narrative shaped by human experiences and knowledge. Rather than being overwhelmed by the disjointed fragments of information that often cloud our understanding of the past, he advocates for a unified perspective that acknowledges the complexities of history while relying on the wisdom gained from collective human experience.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of education, one might say, 'As Don Delillo wisely noted, history is about collective knowledge, not fragments.'
More from Don Delillo
All quotes →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.
Similar quotes
Our generation was born during the turmoil following the First World War. That war marked the dividing line - at least for the Western World - between the comfortable security of the 19th century and the instability and flux of our own time.
When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.
Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.
But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.
Apart from the intrinsic interest of the complex system of beliefs the Puritans carried with them, their lives give a clue to what it meant at the beginning to be American. And the level of scholarship dealing with them has reached a point where it can address the human condition itself.
One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (1888).