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Quote by Mark Helprin

“World War II is the war that made our world. There's no question about that. The history of all the years in which I will spend my life, every single one, that is the seminal event of the history that we will experience.”

Quote by Mark Helprin

Author

Mark Helprin is an American novelist born on June 28, 1947. His works are known for their rich imagination, profound philosophical insights, and unique narrative style. more

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“La guerre, la guerre, everything la guerre. That's how I grew up. So for me, it's real. It's not something in the past.”

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Author:Mark Helprin

“There's an expression in Yiddish, which is "der gelernte naar" - a "learned fool." You can know a great deal, you can have a Ph.D., and you can still be a total idiot.”

Knows Stills Deals Expression Fool Idiot Yiddish

Author:Mark Helprin

“I have a particular dislike of human pride. And if you think that you can engineer outcomes, that's a manifestation of pride. Among other things, it's impractical. It just doesn't work. The world doesn't work that way.”

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“That's what the left is always doing. They have an ideal, and they want people to conform to it. When people don't conform to it, they end up being beaten into the mold. And beaten sometimes hard enough so that if they don't fit, then they kill them. That's what happened in the Soviet Union and China.”

People Ifs Want Ends Sometimes Hard Enough Left Happened Fit Ideals Unions China Soviet Beaten Conform Soviet Union Mold

Author:Mark Helprin

“If you know anything about Islamic civilization, or about the contemporary Middle East, about the sociology and the anthropology of the people who live there, and their recent history, and their religion, and their motivation and everything, then you realize that changing Iraq into a democracy is not going to happen. It's just not going to happen.”

People Ifs Knows Happens Motivation Realizing Democracy Middle Civilization Iraq East Contemporary Islamic Middle East Sociology Anthropology

Author:Mark Helprin

“Particularly as a Jew, I don't like missionary work. I've had it focused on me, and I don't like it. Let people be what they want to be.”

People Want Jew Focused Missionary Missionary Work

Author:Mark Helprin

“I am religious by nature, I'm not a nihilist. I don't follow, I don't even know what the tenets of things like deconstructionism are, and all those schools that come up and their way of looking at things that people strive to incorporate into what they write. I don't even know what they are. Because I sense from a distance that I don't want to know. And therefore even if I had no politics, actual politics, my cultural point of view is hopelessly out of date with the modern literary sensibility. Which is nihilistic, and ironic, detached, cool, and cowardly.”

People Ifs Knows Way Want Writing School Religious Views Modern Distance Strive Come Up Point Of View Ironic Sensibility Cowardly Detached Nihilist

Author:Mark Helprin

“I follow my own nose. So I read things that are different. People will always say to me, "Have you read Robert S. Bosco's latest novel?" or "Have you read so and so's history of Peru, which is reviewed in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times and has a buzz about it?" I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm like from another planet. I'm a pygmy from the jungle.”

People Knows Book Different My Own Talking Novel New York Planets Noses Reviews Jungle Different Peoples New York Times Buzz Peru

Author:Mark Helprin

“One is attracted to beauty. Beauty is the coordination of things, in such a way, that it is what attracts you. It's almost self-defining.”

Way Self Defining Coordination

Author:Mark Helprin

“I've always been terribly uninterested in criticism. And one of the reasons, I just thought recently, is that you know there are various schools of criticism that will compete, and one will supercede the other.”

Knows Reason School Criticism Various Uninterested

Author:Mark Helprin