The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
At night the sky was very near, sprawled in star smoke and gamma cataclysms, but she didn't see it the way she used to, as soul extension, dumb guttural wonder, a thing that lived outside language in the oldest part of her.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a shift in perception of the universe, indicating a deeper but perhaps more complex understanding.
In this quote, Don Delillo explores how a profound connection to the universe can change over time. The speaker recalls how the beauty of the night sky once evoked a simple, instinctive wonder, akin to a child's view of the world. However, with maturity and experience, this wonder becomes intertwined with complexity and perhaps a sense of loss, as language and reason complicate the pure emotional response once felt.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion about the changing perspectives on life as we grow older.
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.
It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
What difference does it make, after all, what your position in life is if you dislike it yourself?
We don‘t have faith that #freedom works. We have evidence.
Man is man because he is free to operate within a framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.
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