The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
Look at those numbers running. Money makes time. It used to be the other way around. Clock time accelerated the rise of capitalism. People stopped thinking about eternity. They began to concentrate on hours, measurable hours,man-hours, using labor more efficiently.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the relationship between time and money in the context of capitalism.
Don Delillo's quote examines how the rise of capitalism transformed society's perception of time from a spiritual or eternal concept to a measurable commodity. As money became a dominant force, time was increasingly viewed in terms of efficiency and productivity, leading to a narrowed focus on immediate gains rather than longer-term meaning or existential reflections.
In practice
In a discussion on the impact of capitalism during a seminar.
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.
Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.
It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.
The higher culture an individual attains, the less field there is left for mockery and scorn.
Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.
I may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.
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