A good river is nature's life work in song. Mark Helprin More Quotes by Mark Helprin More Quotes From Mark Helprin All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents. Mark Helprin air discovery two [When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes. Mark Helprin crazy real book 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. Mark Helprin victory race perfection 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. Mark Helprin summer country travel 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. Mark Helprin editors people world She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years. Mark Helprin used sleep years Truth is no rounder than a horse's eye. Mark Helprin truth-is horse eye A lot of people hate heroes. I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool. Mark Helprin hate real hero 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. Mark Helprin pages grace fiction I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary. Mark Helprin making-money book ideas It's a defining difference, curiosity. I've never known a stupid person who was curious, or a curious person who was stupid. Mark Helprin differences curiosity stupid 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. Mark Helprin growing-up odds children 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. Mark Helprin rushing water watches Because there were all kinds of hell - some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high. Mark Helprin black heaven dirty I made a boy's mistake, common enough, of thinking that real life was knowing many things and many people, living dangerously in faraway places, crossing the sea, or starting a power company on the Columbia River, a steamship line in Bolivia. Mark Helprin real mistake boys Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be. Mark Helprin dream memories children 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. Mark Helprin proportion energy matter I've never had a cup of coffee in my life. I can't even remain in the same room with coffee. Mark Helprin cups coffee rooms I am religious by nature, I'm not a nihilist. I don't follow, I don't even know what the tenets of things like deconstructionism are, and all those schools that come up and their way of looking at things that people strive to incorporate into what they write. I don't even know what they are. Because I sense from a distance that I don't want to know. And therefore even if I had no politics, actual politics, my cultural point of view is hopelessly out of date with the modern literary sensibility. Which is nihilistic, and ironic, detached, cool, and cowardly. Mark Helprin distance religious writing Particularly as a Jew, I don't like missionary work. I've had it focused on me, and I don't like it. Let people be what they want to be. Mark Helprin missionary want people
