We feel a private thrill, admit it, at the sight of beauty in flames. We wish to blast all the fine old things to oblivion and replace them with tasteless identical structures.

— Don DeLillo

What was the barn like before it was photographed?' he said. 'What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. Furthermore, we're part of the aura. Furthermore, we're here, we're now.

— Don DeLillo

What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.

— Don DeLillo

What you see is not what wee see. What you see is distracted by memory, by being who you are, all this time, for all these years.

— Don DeLillo

When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear.

— Don DeLillo

When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.

— Don DeLillo

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

— Don DeLillo

When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.

— Don DeLillo

When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards. But when I think of my work-out in the world, written and published, I like to imagine it’s being read by some stranger somewhere who doesn’t have anyone around him to talk to about books and writing—maybe a would-be writer, maybe a little lonely, who depends on a certain kind of writing to make him feel more comfortable in the world.

— Don DeLillo

Why are free spirits always so fucking dumb?

— Don DeLillo