A Quote by Don DeLillo

I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

Don DeLillo

Quote Topics

Changing Changing The World Continue Great Great Novels Literature Longer Lost Novels Power Think World Written

Quote Author

Don DeLillo
American - Novelist
Born: November 20, 1936

It has seemed to me that literature, as I meant it, was embattled, that it was increasingly difficult to find writing doing what I thought literature should do - which was simply to push people into changing their ideas about the world, and to go further, to encourage us in the work of changing the world, to making it more just and more truly human.

Dorothy Allison

Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so.

Julianna Baggott

I stay up on current events. I read 'The New Yorker' and 'The Economist.' I go to community meetings to see what concerns the people in my neighborhood. I studied literature in college, so I also continue to read poetry, literature, and novels.

Caterina Fake

Good novels are not written, they are rewritten. Great novels are diamonds mined from layered rewrites.

Piers Paul Read

Great Power, capable of everything and only temporarily handicapped by economic difficulties. We are not a great power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power we shall soon cease to be a great nation. Let us take warning from the fate of the Great Powers of the past and not burst ourselves with pride .

Henry Tizard

Total oblivion is the fate of almost everything in this world. I'm very likely to suffer that same fate; my work will probably not be remembered, and if any of it is, if any of those novels is fated to be one of those novels that is still being read 50 or 100 years after it was written, I've probably already written it.

Michel Faber

The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand, and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer.

J. G. Ballard

It's interesting to note that all revolutionary literature was written by pastors. These guys were involved in a revolution against the mightiest power that the world had ever seen.

Randall Terry

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, 'Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what's the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?'

Jane Goodall

I lost my mind at 15. I'd been shown a world where there were no boundaries, where everyone gave me all the power. And I was like, 'This is great!' Then that was gone. But I was like, 'Yeah, but I still want that.' I'd lost my humble, very quiet, introverted sensibilities which I think I definitely had as a kid.

Jamie Bell

I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.

William Faulkner

I think there was a bit of brotherly love, but I think everything has a motive when you're king. It's all about maintaining that power - securing that power - and I think Edward was very skillful at doing that. I think he was a great king. Opinions are split, if you look at what he's done and written about him.

Max Irons

India is mostly vegetarian, and I think that will be crucial to changing the world. I think the United States is lost.

Bernhard Goetz

It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.

Black Elk

There is a tradition that sees journalism as the dark side of literature, with book writing at its zenith. I don't agree. I think that all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti.