Mao II Quotes

“I don’t like not believing. I’m not at peace with it. I take comfort when others believe.” “Karen thinks God is here. Like walkin’ and talkin’.” “I want others to believe, you see. Many believers everywhere. I feel the enormous importance of this. When I was in Catania and saw hundreds of running men pulling a saint on a float through the streets, absolutely running. When I saw people crawl for miles on their knees in Mexico City on the Day of the Virgin, leaving blood on the basilica steps and then joining the crowd inside, the crush, so many people that there was no air. Always blood. The Day of Blood in Teheran. I need these people to believe for me. I cling to believers. Many, everywhere. Without them, the planet goes cold.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“Old hospitals with saints’ names are the ones you want to go to if you have cuts and abrasions. They haven’t forgotten how to treat the classic Crusader wounds.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“A clean light soaked into the shaggy bark of a eucalyptus and it was a powerful thing to see, the whole tree glowed, it showed electric and intense, the branches ran to soft fire, the tree seemed revealed.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“The letters released something, maybe a sense that he was not alone, that the world was a place where travelers in language could know the same things.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“I've heard about a man and woman who are walking the length of the Great Wall of China, approaching each other from opposite directions. Every time I think of them, I see them from above., with the Wall twisting and winding through the landscape and two tiny human figures moving toward each other from remote provinces, step by step. I think this is a story of reverence for the planet, of trying to understand how we belong to the planet in a new way. And it's strange how I construct an aerial view so naturally.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“words stick even as lives fly apart.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“When the Old God leaves the world, what happens to all the unexpended faith?”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“Army ants have discipline, Bill said. Don't ask me what writers have.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“What terrorists gain, novelists lose. The degree to which they influence mass consciousness is the extent of our decline as shapers of sensibility and thought. The danger they represent equals our own failure to be dangerous.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“Mao said death can be light as a feather or heavy as a mountain. You die for the people and the nation, your death is massive and intense. Die for the oppressors, die working for the exploiters and manipulators, die selfish and vain and you float away like a feather of the smallest bird.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“There is the epic and bendable space-time of the theoretical physicist, time detached from human experience, the pure curve of nature, and there is the haunted time of the novelist, intimate, pressing, stale and sad.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“maker only slower. Don’t talk to me about history.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II