List of Mark Helprin Quotes

People's Position On Immigration, Once They Get "sophisticated," And They Rise To The Higher Levels Of Commentary Or Government, It's Usually Determined Solely By Economics. And Not By Anything Else.

One Is Attracted To Beauty. Beauty Is The Coordination Of Things, In Such A Way, That It Is What Attracts You. It's Almost Self-defining.

I Suppose I Could Read More Fiction, But I Haven't Moved In That Direction. I'd Like More Time Even Though I Spend Six Hours A Day Reading. People Say Their Eyes Get Tired, But I've Never Experienced That. In College I Used To Read 10 Hours A Day. My Wife Says I'm Obsessive Compulsive. She Might Have A Point Because When I Was An Undergrad Student We Had The Required Reading List And The Suggested Reading List. I Always Read All The Suggested Reading Too.

We Should Have Absolute Control Over Our Borders. If We Want Cheap Labor To Depress Wages And Disempower The Unions, Then We Could Have Guest Workers. But We Have To Face That Issue. What Is It That We Want To Do? Rather Than Not Facing It, And Having Porous Borders, And The Effect Is That It Disempowers The Unions.

What I Really Like To Do Is To Sit Quietly And Write. All That Other Stuff Is A Problem. Publication To Reception To Negotiation To... Everything, It's A Problem. And I Like To Sit Outside For Long Periods Of Time And Just Be In The Tranquility Of Nature. That's What I Like.

I Believe That Israel Is Very Likely Not To Survive, It's Not Going To Last Forever, And Now There's Nothing That Someone Like Me Can Do About It, In That It's A Threat Of Nuclear Or Biological Or Chemical Attack.

World War Ii Is The War That Made Our World. There's No Question About That. The History Of All The Years In Which I Will Spend My Life, Every Single One, That Is The Seminal Event Of The History That We Will Experience.

I Have A Particular Dislike Of Human Pride. And If You Think That You Can Engineer Outcomes, That's A Manifestation Of Pride. Among Other Things, It's Impractical. It Just Doesn't Work. The World Doesn't Work That Way.

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.

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.

As The Clockwork Of The Millennia Moved A Notch In Front Of Their Eyes, It Had Taken Their Thoughts From Small Things And Reminded Them Of How Vulnerable They Were To Time.

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.