Mark Helprin Quotes
He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.
Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-room apartment.
One is attracted to beauty. Beauty is the coordination of things, in such a way, that it is what attracts you. It's almost self-defining.
The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.
They gave themselves up to the stars the way swimmers can surrender to the waves, and the stars took them without resistance.
And if you were a spirit, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then there you would wait for someone to return, and the story to unfold.
If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.
Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.
And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.
A tranquil city of good laws, fine architecture, and clean streets is like a classroom of obedient dullards, or a field of gelded bulls - whereas a city of anarchy is a city of promise.
There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.
The best way to meet a woman is in an emergency situation - if you're in a shipwreck, or you find yourself behind enemy lines, or in a flood.
Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.
I'm not afraid," Rafi said. "Why not?" "If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today.
The human race is intoxicated with narrow victories, for life is a string of them like pearls that hit the floor when the rope breaks, and roll away in perfection and anarchy.
To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been.
He felt as if he were paying for the privilege of music with portions of his life and body. But it was well worth it.
One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned and much more than you think on what you have inside you from the beginning." Memoir From Antproof Case
Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.
...I returned to walking up the mountain, and there, in the dim asexual beauty of reddening dawns and skies that firmed to blue, I discovered my real and appropriate strengths.
For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.
Really the best way to learn about something is simply to read it and not make a scientific theory of interpretation.
They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.
Whatever I do I've always done not because I want something but to compensate for a loss, to bring about a balance, to create amends, to make things right.
...this marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is God's own signature on earth.
There's something about rushing water that I can watch for hours and feel as if I need to do nothing more. It's alive in a way that's greater than any description of it.
I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn't get him anything other than a living
Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.
their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.
The horse could not do without Manhattan. It drew him like a magnet, like a vacuum, like oats, or a mare, or an open, never-ending, tree-lined road.
Not surprisingly, he began to sing, and because no one in the world could hear him, and he sang without inhibition, he sang well.
Writing is still my main career, but I would love, for instance, to serve in the New York State Assembly.
If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined.
Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, desperately moved, changed forever.
All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.
I've never had a cup of coffee in my life. I can't even remain in the same room with coffee.
I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary.
As the clockwork of the millennia moved a notch in front of their eyes, it had taken their thoughts from small things and reminded them of how vulnerable they were to time.
As it somehow always manages before the winter solstice, but never after, the early darkness was cheerful and promising, even for those who had nothing.
When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.
Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.
Because there were all kinds of hell - some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high.