A good river is nature's life work in song. Mark Helprin More Quotes by Mark Helprin More Quotes From Mark Helprin Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light. Mark Helprin stars light dark It was a good speech, but the reaction was due to the fact that politics are madness, and even if one does not know it, a country in electoral season experiences flares of lunacy like the great storms that sometimes march across the golden surface of the sun. Mark Helprin storm speech country ...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. Mark Helprin strength nature real 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. Mark Helprin privilege wells body I have been fighting over commas all my life. Mark Helprin has-beens fighting 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. Mark Helprin oats horse tree 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 Mark Helprin requirements soul clever When faced with something I fear, I tend to eat spaghetti. Mark Helprin spaghetti fear I've imagined great victories, and I've imagined great races. The races are better. Mark Helprin great-race victory race Not born to be rich, by 1981 I had nonetheless begun to use a PC that required for its operation the absorption of several hundred pages of protocols and the placement of very large floppy disks in the freezer to fix frequent crashes. Mark Helprin rich pages use My father ran London Films. He made films like 'The Red Shoes,' 'The Third Man.' And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with him. Also, I went to school with their children. Mark Helprin father children school Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him. Mark Helprin play beautiful hands Why do people resist [engines, bridges, and cities] so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and historical momentum in an imperfect world, because without imagination we would not have the wherewithal to challenge certainty, and we could never rise above ourselves. Mark Helprin imperfect-world cities bridges Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking. Mark Helprin laughter lakes love their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals. Mark Helprin imagination animal wind Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies. Mark Helprin laughter lonely running They were dancing around the fountain, arm in arm, in an old Dutch dance, their cheeks touching, their hands entwined. They had no music; they hummed. And there was no reason for them to be dancing that Peter Lake could see, except that it was an exceptionally beautiful night. Mark Helprin lakes beautiful night Heavy blizzards start as a gentle and persistent snow. Mark Helprin gentle heavy snow 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. Mark Helprin cities law promise The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk. Mark Helprin careers new-york people
