A Quote by Don DeLillo

The language of my books has shaped me as a man.

Don DeLillo

Quote Topics

Books Language Man Me Shaped

Quote Author

Don DeLillo
American - Novelist
Born: November 20, 1936

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there. On one level this truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language. I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence. The language of my books has shaped me as a man. There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live.

Don DeLillo

Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books.

Samuel Johnson

I don't wanna be shaped like a girl. I love being shaped like a woman, and trust me ladies, your man won't mind either.

Miley Cyrus

It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; this is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks.

Terry Pratchett

Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.

Ursula K. Le Guin

In many of my books, I explore the ways in which grandparents or other older persons are shaped by the young, and the young are shaped by the old, in an evolving dance.

Sharon Creech

Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.

Stephan Jenkins

Those who violate the rules of a language do not enter new territory; they leave the domain of meaningful discourse. Even facts in these circumstances dissolve, because they are shaped by the language and subjected to its limitations.

Paul Feyerabend

There is certainly no one 'type' of writer who deliberately draws on Shakespeare. In fact, there's a strong argument that everyone writing in the English language is influenced by Shakespeare because, to a considerable degree, he shaped that language.

Matt Haig

I would say that the fundamental question of geography is about how humans shaped the Earth's surface and how we, in turn, are shaped by the ways in which we have shaped the Earth's surface. So, for me, geography was just a set of tools that allowed me to ask these kinds of questions and to try to think through them.

Trevor Paglen

We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity...[For] we are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.

Barack Obama

My dad shaped the footballing side of me, and Mum shaped me as a person. I've always been very close to her - we've only ever had one argument, and that was over something stupid when I was 13.

Frank Lampard

I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from a man's and for which man's language was so inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored.

Anais Nin

I am a product of endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic...In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.