Quotes from Mark Helprin

We're not dealing with Isaac Newton here. She likes what she calls 'romance.' To her that means candles, rose petals, and a bathtub. I don't understand what this thing is that women have about candles. All I can say is that there must've been a hell of a lot of sex in the eighteenth century.

The smell of hot bread came from underneath the tent walls, and Perseus said that the ovens had just been opened. You haven't eaten in three days. You'd better strengthen yourself. How can I eat, Alessandro answered, pointing his nose to his padded hands. Don't be ridiculous, they're perfect for holding a hot loaf of bread. You'll look like a kangaroo, but you'll be able to eat all you want. Now you can pick up a bowl of boiling soup as if you were a Cossack.

Life is so quick that it's all played out at the gates of death, and the value of resolution is that it quickens life.

In one respect it hardly mattered, for the life of a soldier is an introduction to death

Do you know why you walk slowly when you're old?" "No." "Because with age you receive the gift of friction. The less time you have, the more you suffer, the more you feel, the more you observe, and the more slowly time moves even as it races ahead." "I don't understand." "You will.

Guariglia, what happens when you let go, when your strength leaves you and you sink into darkness, when there's nothing that you or anyone else can do, no matter how desperate you are, no matter how you try? Perhaps it's then, when you have neither pride nor power, that you are saved, brought to an unimaginably great reward.

I was brought up,' Freddy informed him, 'not to suffer anxiety about decisive initiative of all types.

I think it would be vain to imagine that we could be favored without effort. As I understand it, miracles come to those who risk defeat in seeking them. They come to those who have exhausted themselves completely in a struggle to accomplish the impossible.

The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, then naturally you would be a liberal.

The first was that it was almost impossible to get. The second, that, once you had it, it was almost impossible to keep. The third, that these laws applied only to each individual but not to anyone else. In other words, though money was impossible to get and impossible to keep, for everyone else it flowed in by the bucketful and stayed forever.

No, De Roos said. You mustn't thank me. The relatives of patients thank the physician as if the physician were God. It's no good, and if the patient dies it turns to ash—not just for them, but, as you can imagine, for me. I'll see you later.

Though he had spoken of the subject many times, in the silence of his room he added the powerful kind of phrasing that would not have occurred to him as he spoke, because it's origins were in the collaboration of hand and pen.

what happens when you let go, when your strength leaves you and you sink into darkness, when there's nothing that you or anyone else can do, no matter how desperate you are, no matter how you try? Perhaps it's then, when you have neither pride nor power, that you are saved, brought to an unimaginably great reward.

win. "Spit in their eye," Evelyn had said, cheerfully but with the tranquil acceptance of her own fate. "Defiance, Catherine, is a gift of God, who is superior to nature. When nature comes to get you, honor God by treating it, as He would, with neither fear nor respect.

You'll be shot, they cautioned. No. I won't be shot. I'm going to shoot them, and then I'll go home. I'll be perfectly safe. I can see the future, and the clouds are lifting. You can see the future? How can you see the future? I know enough now about the patterns of the past to see the darkness of the future unraveling before the golden light of time. Behind the clouds is the dawn. How can I possibly know such things? The fact is, I do. So watch out.

Alessandro learned yet again that the joy of escape is better than the joy of merely being free.

They had taken to the movement unlike anything he had ever seen, and he thought that should this venture of the Jews prove successful, the new state would be filled with dancers and musicians, but especially dancers, for dancing like nothing else says: I am still alive.

Albany sometimes tried to rattle, but failed to emit an audible sound.

Humanity requires for its understanding and governance not science but art

For the first time in his life, he felt exactly what he was, and he was not impressed.

Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change a man forever.

I've had a profession for a number of years, and it has mastered me. A profession is like a great snake that wraps itself around you. Once you are enwrapped, you are in a slow fight for the rest of your life, and the lightness of youth leaves you. You don't have time, for example, to think about the city even as you are walking through it.

Honor is a complex and important matter best served by doing the right thing.

Physical features count little unless they are illumined from within.