The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Don DelilloRead
Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of trusting our own perceptions over external influences like media.
Don Delillo's quote suggests that individuals should not blindly accept information presented through media, such as radio broadcasts, without questioning its veracity. It underscores the significant role of personal experience and empirical evidence in forming our beliefs and opinions, urging us to remain critical thinkers rather than passive consumers of information.
In practice
In a discussion about media influence, one might cite this quote to emphasize the need for critical thinking.
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. 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.
In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting.
Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.
How many people also in our time are in search of God, in search of Jesus and of his Church, in search of divine mercy, and are waiting for a "sign" that will touch their minds and their hearts! Today, as then, the Evangelist reminds us that the only "sign" is Jesus raised on the cross: Jesus who died and rose is the absolutely sufficient sign. Through him we can understand the truth about life and obtain salvation.
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