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Underworld: Picador Classic

Book by Don DeLillo · 21 quotes · Thinking, Ifs, Knows

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Underworld: Picador Classic Quotes

“Capital burns off the nuance in a culture. Foreign investment, global markets, corporate acquisitions, the flow of information through transnational media, the attenuating influence of money that's electronic and sex that's cyberspaced, untouched money and computer-safe sex, the convergence of consumer desire--not that people want the same things, necessarily, but that they want the same range of choices.”

PeopleWantDesireChoicesCultureSexInfluenceMediaInformationSafeComputerFlowInvestmentConsumersCorporateRangeAcquisitionNuanceConvergence
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“You feel sorry for yourself. You think you're missing something and you don't know what it is. You're lonely inside your life. You have a job and a family and a fully executed will, already, at your age, because the whole point is to die prepared, die legal, with all the papers signed. Die liquid, so they can convert to cash.”

ThinkingKnowsFeelsWholeAgeJobsDeathDiesMissingPaperLonelyPreparedSorryCashPapersLiquidMissing SomethingFeel Sorry For You
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“History was not a matter of missing minutes on the tape. I did not stand helpless before it. I hewed to the texture of collected knowledge, took faith from the solid and availing stuff of our experience. Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood -- read the speeches of Mussolini -- at least we've known the thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation. (82)”

IfsBelieveHumansMatterTogetherStuffKnownBloodMinutesMissingThousandTenSpeechNarrativeTapeHelplessTextureWisps
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“Years after I'd seen him for the last time I found myself thinking of him unexpectedly and often. You know how certain places grow powerful in the mind with passing time. In those early morning dreams when I come back to bed after a sleepy pee and fall quickly into the narrow end of the night, there is one set of streets I keep returning to, one dim mist of railroad rooms and certain figures reappear, borderline ghosts.”

ThinkingKnowsYearsMindEndsDreamLastsNightCertainFallFoundGrowsRoomsPowerfulMorningKnow HowStreetsFiguresBedGhostPassingPassingsLast TimeMistRailroadsSleepyEarly MorningBorderlineThinking Of Him
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“There is a balance, a kind of standoff between the time continuum and the human entity, our frail bundle of soma and psyche. We eventually succumb to time, it's true, but time depends on us. We carry it in our muscles and genes, pass it on to the next set of time-factoring creatures, our brown-eyed daughters and jug-eared sons, or how would the world keep going. Never mind the time theorists, the cesium devices that measure the life and death of the smallest silvery trillionth of a second.... We were the only crucial clocks, our minds and bodies, way stations for the distribution of time.”

WorldWayMindHumansKindBodyTimeNextSonDependsBalanceCreaturesDaughterClockMusclesBrownLife And DeathDevicesStationsKeep GoingCrucialGenesSmallestEntityDistributionMind And BodyFrailBundlesTheoristsContinuumSomaJugsStandoffsFactoring
Book:Underworld: Picador Classic
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