Don DeLillo Quotes

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.

I just find that there's something about looking back on interviews, whether for purposes of remembering what I said about something or if it's for posterity when I'm 75.

So as the years draw on toward the Biblical limit, the inclination to look back, and to tell some sort of story of what one has seen, grows upon most of us.

I kept notebooks as a kid, and they were important to me.

Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories ar for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

I am not a historian. I am a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

I look at old performance videos now, and it's really funny - I thought I was such a gangster!

I'm not into watching stuff I did last week, let alone three or four years ago.

I was born in 1949 - which seems like a long time ago... Actually, it is a long time ago, when I think about it.

I realized I've spent all my life creating a past.

I was probably 35 when I wrote the first story. The voice is kind of a mix in that it has a young voice, but it's also someone who's looking back. I like that kind of double vision.

There is no fence nor hedge round time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it if you can remember.

When I look back at the 1980s I pinch myself. Did I really do all that?

When I look at pictures when I was younger, I do the quintessential cringe.

Most writers, by the time they're 60, must have revisited their childhood a dozen times.

I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.

As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

I'm not particularly fond of the past, but I do ramble on about it quite a bit.

There is always something rather absurd about the past.

I enjoy looking back on my life. I'm thinking seriously about starting to write about it.

Writers are rememberers.

Looking back is a way to sharpen the focus on the things you want to change in your life. I think there's something about nostalgia that really puts a fine point on the here-and-now, and that can be incredibly fascinating and interesting and engaging for the mind.