Quotes from Mark Helprin

What would happen if we took everything that exists in the universe, and divided it by one? I'll tell you. It would remain the same. So, therefore, how do we know that someone isn't doing that right now, at this very instant? It makes me shudder to think of it. We might be constantly divided by one, or multiplied by one for that matter, and we wouldn't even know it!

We ate simply, we were healthy, and we were uninterested in those things that should be called possessions not because they are possessed but because they possess. Those ten years were the happiest of my life save the first ten, the years in which I had neither position nor success, and no one took notice of me. Those were the years of the parent holding the child in his arms, lifting him high in the air, and pulling him close. As I held my own son, when he was a baby, God was right there.

There's something about rushing water that I can watch for hours and feel as if I need to do nothing more. It's alive in a way that's greater than any description of it...

When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.

Only bad actors memorize lines. Good actors are perpetually writing them as they act.

All these things were shaken about within Peter Lake like pots and pans banging against the side of a peddler's swaybacked horse. It was hard to bear the weight of partial revelations which refused to venture past the tip of his tongue.

We are all perfect clocks that the Divinity has set to ticking when, even before birth, the heart explodes into its lifelong dance.

In fact, one might make the case that New York would not have shone without its legions of contrary devils polishing the lights of goodness with their inexplicable opposition and resistance.

The spark of life is not gain. Nor is it luxury. The spark of life is movement. Color. Love. And furthermore...if you really want to enjoy life, you must work quietly and humbly to realize your delusions of grandeur.

I like the race, rather than the winning. Do you really? Yes, I've imagined great victories, and I've imagined great races. The races are better.

The best thing to do was to stop it while he still could, since it was something that would lead nowhere, painfully.

To be in New York on a beautiful day is to feel razor close to being in love.

In a thousand years, Alessandro said, this incident will be remembered. By then, of course, we will have become angels, devils, or a dragon that breathes fire...but we have given this rock a story that will be passed on. What good is that? It isn't to our advantage, if that's what you mean. However, it's pleasurable to cast a line into the future, no matter how tenuously. You never know, the line may be unbroken all the way to the last judgment.

Just the two of us. We're in it together. The pleasure will be ours alone. For the rest of our lives.

The obituary writers drew their incomplete sketches, touring through his life like travelers to England who do not ever see swans, sheep, bicycles, and blue eyes.

A horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.

In a life, or a portion of a life illuminated, there's a fullness and a balance that no theory or abstraction can match. Why do people waste so much time on abstraction? The life that is given to us, that we play out, is something that you cannot any more grasp with systems and ideas than you can tame an elephant with tweezers.

I think it takes some terrible or great event to fuse two people together without inhibition. Without heat or shock, it can't be done. I believe that's why sexual love, which needn't be, is so intensely intertwined with sin.

In living, one muddles through the years for the sake of those one or two moments which are indisputably great.

And Peter Lake knew that these things were nothing in themselves but the means by which to remember those he had loved, and to remind him that the power of the love he had known was repeated a million times a million times over, from one soul to another--all worthy, all holy, none ever lost. He glided through the illusions that flashed bravely on the smoke, and he was touched very deeply by the will of things to live in the light.

The best thing in the world is the truth. You find it out anyway, in the end, or sooner.

Though the house itself was a fortress, still, Isaac Penn had thought to make sure that anyone who did manage to break in would be kept busy. Thus the vault was not a vault but rather a solid plug of molybdenum steel which extended into the wall for five feet.

Guariglia went to his children, who were playing by the brazier. Look at them, he said. I know they may not be as beautiful to you as they are to me... They are, Alessandro interrupted. No, Guariglia insisted, they're not beautiful in that way, but to me, Alessandro, they are all that is good and holy. I didn't know God until I saw them. It's funny, as soon as you lose faith, you have children, and life reawakens.

Breathing, for example, was never taken for granted, since, half the time, thanks to the many chemical works and refineries, it was nearly impossible.