The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.
Interpretation
This quote critiques how television shapes people's perceptions of reality.
Don Delillo's quote highlights the pervasive influence of television in modern life, suggesting that for many individuals, their understanding of the world is limited to their immediate surroundings and what is presented to them on screen. It underscores the idea that television serves as a lens through which people interpret events, leading to a fascination with televised occurrences that may overshadow direct experiences in the real world.
In practice
During a discussion about the impact of media on society.
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.
You go on being reincarnated until you reach the actual Truth. Heaven and Hell are just a state of mind. We are all here to become Christ-like. The actual world is an illusion.
Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years in moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.
The people must fight for their laws as for their walls.
The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.
Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.
You say to me 'Show me your God.' I answer you, 'Everything you see in your heart that might sadden God, remove.'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.