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

Though builders may build, in the main they follow the plans of architects. Teachers teach, but they must have a text. Politicians govern, but only upon the flow of commentary that raises them up or casts them down.

Mark Helprin

If one accepts Hezbollah's self-description as a resistance movement, in which case one must, in light of the fact that Hezbollah never ceases to provoke, view Israel's mere existence as a continuing act of aggression, then Hezbollah has indeed shown...

Mark Helprin

The trick in nuclear strategy is to maintain stability by balancing potentials and thus to discourage events from converting the hypothetical to the actual.

Mark Helprin

Not born to be rich, by 1981 I had nonetheless begun to use a PC that required for its operation the absorption of several hundred pages of protocols and the placement of very large floppy disks in the freezer to fix frequent crashes.

Mark Helprin

Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

When I was very young, I used to clean up after my parents. If I stay in a hotel, I make the bed and clean the room when I get up, even the bathroom mirror, for which I carry a tiny bottle of ammonia.

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

Barnes & Noble is able to publish price-reduced non-copyrighted works not so much because it saves the 10 percent to 15 percent of revenue that would go to the gruel-eating authors, but because it saves the 50 percent that would go to the publishers.

Mark Helprin

To assert, as some have, that illegal immigrants do not depress wages because they do the jobs Americans refuse is the kind of nonsense economists speak when they strain to be counterintuitive. It is similar to saying that cheap imports do not hold d...

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

'Creative Commons' is the self-congratulatory name of a self-congratulatory movement. Somewhat like kibbutz on the Internet, the idea is to write programs - 'free ware' - and distribute them without charge.

Mark Helprin

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

Mark Helprin

Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It's just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example.

Mark Helprin

Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but y...

Mark Helprin

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.

Mark Helprin

I used to write exclusively with one particular Montblanc fountain pen, although lately I have had to use a roller-tip fountain pen, because I find it harder and harder to control the fine muscles of my right hand during prolonged periods of work. I ...

Mark Helprin

My father ran London Films. He made films like 'The Red Shoes,' 'The Third Man.' And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with...

Mark Helprin

The British monarchy has the political and constitutional task of subtracting from the government and governors of Britain the papal and kingly airs that in America, because we have no such institution, unfortunately adhere to the president.

Mark Helprin

The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, the...

Mark Helprin

Author Bio

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