Don DeLillo Quotes

The better day, the worse deed.

The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.

Actors and burglars work better at night.

The other night a mugger took off his mask and made me wear it.

I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.

Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.

Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.

Thou speak'st like him's untutored to repeat: Who makes the fairest show means most deceit.

For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled.

Knavery's plain face is never seen till used.

If you fake the funk, your nose will grow.

A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

As a rule, we go about with masks, we go about looking honest, and we are able to conceal ourselves all through the day.

You love to listen to the very things that nailed your supposed Master to the tree?! Come off of it, man! Become a hellion, give yourself to demons, run wild; but don't come in here saying you're a believer and playing that game! You want to dance with the devil, then dance all night long! But don't come in here dancing with Christ for a moment, and then go back out there and share your love.

Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

'Tis not need we know our every thought Or see the work shop where each mask is wrought Wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, Careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit And serve our jape's turn for a night or two.

Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

Crime and vice generally require darkness for prowling. They disappear when light plays upon them.

Only liars manage to always be out during bad times and in during good times.

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian.

The greatest superstition now entertained by public men is that hypocrisy is the royal road to success.