Mark Helprin quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Mark Helprin on Wise Famous Quotes.

They gave themselves up to the stars the way swimmers can surrender to the waves, and the stars took them without resistance.

The horse could not do without Manhattan. It drew him like a magnet, like a vacuum, like oats, or a mare, or an open, never-ending, tree-lined road.

To be in New York on a beautiful day is to feel razor close to being in love.

I'm not afraid," Rafi said.
"Why not?"
"If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today.

Humanity requires for its understanding and governance not science but art,

What a place to put a city, right on the front line of absolute zero. No wonder a cow burned it down.

strength floods in after a fall.

You can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason.

Nobody steals books except kleptomaniacs and university students. In most places you can leave a book on the street and come back for in the next day.

Potatoes have much more staying power than caviar.

What could be more lovely than writing a book about something you love?

The treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter and love.

Life is so quick that it's all played out at the gates of death, and the value of resolution is that it quickens life.

I wanted the music to be full, to surround us, to lift us like the swell, so I rented a bloody orchestra. You only live once.

Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.

This marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is God's own signature on earth.

Only bad actors memorize lines. Good actors are perpetually writing them as they act.

Whatever is, is, and whatever is not, is not

No one knows better than I that it's all here, and need not be explained or interpreted - just seized.

I don't aspire at present to be king of the hill in American literature.

As much as I love art, there is no art as fine as the world we have been given.

In daily life language is important, if not in itself, then as a symptom.

If when she is aged you cannot see in the eyes of a woman the youth she was at eighteen, then it is not she that is old but you that are blind.

A cat is an excuse for a lonely woman to talk to herself. That's what a cat is.

All great discoveries ... are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.

Isn't it better to think nothing than to think something that is completely idiotic?

To be paid for one's joy is to steal.

They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.

He felt as if he were paying for the privilege of music with portions of his life and body. But it was well worth it.

Critics can neither build nor explore. All they do, really, is say yes or no - and complicate it.

Not surprisingly, he began to sing, and because no one in the world could hear him, and he sang without inhibition, he sang well.

Truth is no rounder than a horse's eye.

I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn't get him anything other than a living.

Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.

They were already in love and both of them knew it, but for both it was too fast.

to cite Montaigne, "Nature always gives us happier laws than those we give ourselves."125

but, as we know, even when the silver wears away and you're left with copper, if you attend to it every day it has a gleam all its own.

Unlike Hezbollah, Israel's more modest aim is to survive, and that it has done.

The mind, you see, is like a muscle. For it to remain agile and strong, it must work.

Their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.

We are like poor people, who have nothing but each other, and are happy.

It is said that marriage is a long war between ancient families trapped in close proximity by lust.

We have been so enthusiastic in our welcome as to be obsequious - to machines.

I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary.

The room, as she saw it, was a web of motion, a symphony of mischievou dancing particles quite like the smooth and placid notes of a fine concerto.

It was easy to argue with Quagliagliarello, if you had patience, and if you could pronounce his name.

The greatest fight is when you are fighting in the smoke and cannot see with your eyes.

Her eyes showed that though she may have decided to regret him, as long as he was in her presence she could not.

He heard the Baymen tell of war, but they never said it could be harnessed, its head held down, and made to run in place.

Physical features count little unless they are illumined from within.

And how does God speak to you?"
"In the language of everything that is beautiful.

What is apparent is not always what is true.

Because there were all kinds of hell - some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high.

to defeat pain he had to separate it from time, its most useful ally.

What I did with his automobile was fairly dramatic and somewhat risky, but still a lot easier than finding a parking place on the Upper East Side.

In America, Fredericka, they don't really have trains for people. The trains here are used mainly to transport pigs, television sets, and fruit.

Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You'll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step.

The greatest blizzards start with the finest snow.

Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

One of the things I worked very hard on all my life was to be like everyone else. I tried very hard to fit in.

If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.

He wanted actually to live inside the dream that captured his eye, to spend his days and nights in a fume of burnished gold.

What argument is left with someone you love if she is willing to break your heart?

The best thing to do was to stop it while he still could, since it was something that would lead nowhere, painfully.

If you don't have compassion you won't be compelled to help.

One shouldn't ever do anything to protect one's dignity. You either have it or you don't.

Marriages are made in heaven which is why they cause so much trouble on earth.

When soldiers go home, their first desire, whether they know it or not, is to have children, children being the only antidote for war.

In living, one muddles through the years for the sake of those one or two moments which are indisputably great.

Those who are vain have little ability to feel grateful.

They knew that to survive in Manhattan he would have to know something of bitterness before he arrived.

For the first time in his life, he felt exactly what he was, and he was not impressed.

The best way to meet a woman is in an emergency situation - if you're in a shipwreck, or you find yourself behind enemy lines, or in a flood.

Anticipation is the heart of wisdom. If you are going to cross a desert, you anticipate that you will be thirsty, and you take water.

Albany sometimes tried to rattle, but failed to emit an audible sound.

Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-room apartment.

A cat can outrace the best thoroughbred horse if only it can grasp the idea of racing.

Alessandro learned yet again that the joy of escape is better than the joy of merely being free.

That's writing, huh. What does it do?" "It's like talking, but it makes no sound.

Disdain is only as intense as similarity.

Many people just like to show that they're thinking the right thoughts. And as the 'right' thoughts change like the wind, so do they.

When people ask me why is 'Winter's Tale' a fantasy, I point out that it is not a fantasy.

I have been fighting over commas all my life.

Souls are complicated things.

I was brought up,' Freddy informed him, 'not to suffer anxiety about decisive initiative of all types.

Because I don't need oxygen. I've already come to all my conclusions. I'm just slowly gliding down. Someday I'll be as light as a feather.

They move, don't they? Who do you think sets things to moving? Nothing that moves lacks a soul.

Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.

Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change a man forever.

For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.

A benevolent act is like a locust: it sleeps until it is called.

A good river is nature's life work in song.

he quickly became like so many people in New York; that is, comfortable, forgotten, and alone. Though

I didn't know the world could be like this ... I've never seen the sky in such a passion of kindness.

Heavy blizzards start as a gentle and persistent snow.

When faced with something I fear, I tend to eat spaghetti.

I have jumped out of airplanes but I was not technically a paratrooper. I was an infantryman and a night fighter, anti-terrorist.

She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years.

It's a defining difference, curiosity. I've never known a stupid person who was curious, or a curious person who was stupid.

His name was Peter Lake, and he said to himself out loud, You're in bad shape when a horse takes pity on you, you stupid bastard,