Quotes by Mark Helprin

About Mark Helprin:

Mark Helprin is an American novelist, journalist, conservative commentator, Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. While Helprin's fictional works straddle a number of disparate genres and styles, he has stated that he "belongs to no literary school, movement, tendency, or trend".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

I have seen lonely people of advancing age, yet as constant as angels, keeping faith to those they loved who fell in wars that current generations, not having known them, cannot even forget. The sight of them moving hesitantly among the tablets and c...

Mark Helprin

In the Freudian age, parents say to their children, 'Don't be defensive,' meaning, 'You have no argument,' but I was born in the age of Rommel, when defense was considered an honorable thing.

Mark Helprin

Mozart and Neil Diamond may have begun with the same idea, but that a work of art is more than an idea is confirmed by the difference between the 'Soave sia il vento' and 'Kentucky Woman.' We have different words for 'art' and 'idea' because they are...

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery conf...

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

Music was a chain forged half of silences and half of sound, love was nothing without longing and loss, and were time not to have at its end the absence of time, and the absence of time not to have been preceded by time, neither would be of any conse...

Mark Helprin

I think it takes some terrible or great event to fuse two people together without inhibition. Without heat or shock, it can't be done. I believe that's why sexual love, which needn't be, is so intensely intertwined with sin.

Mark Helprin

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.

Mark Helprin

I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or...

Mark Helprin

For example, they recently had a piece on a character--I think his name was Ambrosio D'Urbervilles--whose "design statement" was to stuff an entire apartment from floor to ceiling with dark purple cottonballs. He called it "Portrait of a Dead Camel D...

Mark Helprin

She felt as if she knew the stars, and had been among them, or would be.

Mark Helprin

He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.

Mark Helprin

[When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.

Mark Helprin

The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.

Mark Helprin

Author Bio

  • NameMark Helprin
  • DescriptionUS author, journalist, commentator
  • BornJune 28, 1947
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Author; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Rome Prize