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"Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant."
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"Genius without wisdom is like a plane without wings, it will navigate the runway but it will never know the sky."

"Genius is finding the invisible link between things."

"This was genius at close quarters, and genius had that something above normal in it that was a great strain upon the ordinary mind and feeling. All five were different from each other, yet each had that curious quality of burning intensity, the single-mindedness of purpose that made such a terrifying impression. She did not know whether it were a quality of brain or rather a quality of outlook, of intensity. But each of them, she thought, was in his or her way a passionate idealist."

"The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos."

"The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do."

"Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one."
Explore more quotes by Don DeLillo

"The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence."

"I felt Joyce was an influence on my fiction, but in a very general way, as a kind of inspiration and a model for the beauty of language."

"Doesn't seem quite real. It's not meaningful. I can't quite imagine myself being 73. That's the age my father was! [Laughter.] How can I be his age? It's weird."

"The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the steep glide began, people rose, fell, collided, swam in their seats. Then the serious screaming and moaning began. Almost immediately a voice from the flight deck was heard on the intercom: 'We're falling out of the sky! We're going down! We're a silver gleaming death machine!' This outburst struck the passengers as an all but total breakdown of authority, competence and command presence and it brought on a round of fresh and desperate wailing."

"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?"

"Secrets are an exalted state, almost a dream state. They're a way of arresting motion, stopping the world so we can see ourselves in it."

"All that incoherence. Selection, election, option, alternative. All behind him now. Codes and formats. Courses of action. Values, bias, predilection. Choice is a subtle form of disease."
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