The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the shift in cultural influence from artists to those who employ violence.
In this quote, Don Delillo suggests that artists once had the power to influence the culture's inner life and emotions through their art. However, he observes a troubling shift where this influence has been overshadowed by destructive forces, such as bomb-makers and gunmen, highlighting a loss of the artist's role in shaping society's values and narratives.
Themes
ArtCultureInfluenceViolenceSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of artists in modern society.
More from Don Delillo
All quotes βWar is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.
Don DelilloRead
American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
Don DelilloRead
For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.
Don DelilloRead
[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. β¨He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way heβs carrying a gun. β¨This is one of the essential images in American mythology.
Don DelilloRead
There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.
Don DelilloRead
Similar quotes
At the end of the day it's got to be a good movie, it's got to be a funny movie, and it's got to make people think, 'Hey, I couldn't have spent my time any better.'
Tom HanksRead
Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream, but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can colour one's entire day.
Neil GaimanRead
I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It's astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.
Francis Ford CoppolaRead
It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is - and not so much a matter of being real.
Laurence OlivierRead
If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.
Alan RickmanRead