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"Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from the world and sets us apart from each other. We wander in the ambient noise, checking one more time for the flight coupon, the boarding pass, the visa. The process convinces us that at any moment we may have to submit to the force that is implied in all this, the unknown authority behind it, behind the categories, the languages we don't understand. This vast terminal has been erected to examine souls."
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Exlpore more Modernity quotes
"To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it."
"A selfie has more face and fewer feelings."
"These days we have Smartphones, Smartcars, Smartboards, Smarteverything, but consider this: if technology is getting smarter, does that mean humans are getting dumber?"
"For millions of years, man spoke only to what he could see. Suddenly, in just one decade, 'seeing' and 'speaking' have been separated. We think we're used to it, yet we don't realize the immense impact it's had on our reflexes. Our bodies are simply not used to it. Frankly, the result is that, when we talk on the telephone, we enter a state that is similar to certain magical trances; we can discover other things about ourselves."
"With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken-formerly it was only the prominent-and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same, so we shall only need one portrait."
"Widespread commercial distribution of ice was so new that 300 tons of the precious commodity melted at one port while customs officials tried to figure out how to classify it."
Explore more quotes by Don DeLillo
"The modern meaning of life's end-when does it end? How does it end? How should it end? What is the value of life? How do we measure it?"
"When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery."
"Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail."
"The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence."
"I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence."
"One 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 slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts."
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