Don DeLillo Quotes

Some people say that in stressful situations I can seem unflappable, and I think that's partly because I'm always kind of internally flapped.

No one consciously wants to destroy themselves. It always comes in a disguise. But then you have to deal with it some way.

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

If I have not lost my mind I can sometimes hear it preparing to defect

Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.

I'm really quite bipolar, and the depressed times, when everything felt like night, sometimes you get to such a low point that you physically beat at it until it bleeds - as you would say - bleeds till sunshine. You get to a point where you say, 'I will not take it anymore! I'm gonna do something drastic if I stay this depressed. I've got to break out of there!'

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication—we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness.

Wisdom disguises our wounds; it teaches us how to bleed in secret.

If you don't feel good about something, you don't shake it off easily.

In My Secret Life" "I saw you this morning, you were moving so fast. Can't seem to loosen my grip On the past. And I miss you so much, there's no one in sight. And we're still making love In my secret life. I smile when I am angry, I cheat and I lie, I do what I have to do to get by, In my secret life.

Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them.

Contrary to popular belief, the experience of terror does not make you braver. Perhaps though, it is easier to hide your fear when you're afraid all the time.

The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.

I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled.

There's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill and we're all haunted by something, and some people manage to find a way to ride it out so that they don't wind up needing extra help. So I think that "mental illness," as a term, is garbage. Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something.

All through the night, she battled herself. Or battled to know herself. She fell apart and then put herself back together and then she fell apart again and put herself back together, over and over.

I told myself that if I didn't care, this wouldn't have hurt so much - surely that proved I was alive and human and all those touchy-feely things, for once and for all. But that wasn't a relief, not when I felt like a skyscraper with dynamite on every floor.

I have always been amazed at my contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.

Being easily freaked out comes with its own special skill set: you develop subtle tricks to work around it, make sure people don't notice. Pretty soon, if you're a fast learner, you can get through the day looking almost exactly like a normal human being.

Because I know that hope and fear are connected, I put my mask of hope on.

Anger punishes the bearer's heart. Who remains angry suffers most. For many, the search for perfection virtually guarantees it will be found, and disregarded in order to continue the search. Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.

I think my apocalyptic feelings went deeper than [heavily influenced by Reagan and AIDS]. I'm really at peace with how afraid I am.

Were all conning ourselves, one way or another, just to get through life.

I've overcome the blow, I've learned to take it well. I only wish my words could just convince myself that it just wasn't real. But that's not the way it feels.

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.