Quotes from Mark Helprin

He heard the Baymen tell of war, but they never said it could be harnessed, its head held down, and made to run in place.

Their conversation had gone like this: 'Something something, something something, something something something…the White Dog of Afghanistan…something something something, something, something, something else, something entirely unintelligible.

The way she looked at him, and he knew it, it was clear that she was seeking someone she could love, someone who would love her as if she were once again a girl and the world was young. There was no question that he was capable of such a thing. She could see it in his face and read it in his every expression.

That's writing, huh. What does it do?" "It's like talking, but it makes no sound.

He thought only of one thing--the geometries before him. Here was God speaking in His simple absolute language, according to the same grammar that He had used to start the planets on their smooth and silken dance.

They glanced over at Catherine, who was dancing with Billy, as only fathers and daughters can dance. No matter how old the daughter may be, the father is dancing, in joy unparalleled, with his child when she was little.

For example, they recently had a piece on a character--I think his name was Ambrosio D'Urbervilles--whose design statement was to stuff an entire apartment from floor to ceiling with dark purple cottonballs. He called it Portrait of a Dead Camel Dancing on the Roof of a Steambath.

the intellect is of no use unless it's disciplined by the mortification of the flesh, so that it may serve the soul.

I knew it was easier to drill things in than to take them out.' 'It's like a screw!' Craig-Vyvyan shouted.... 'If you pull off it's head, you never get it out.

I've imagined great victories, and I've imagined great races. The races are better.

I've given myself to you. You may have my body, soul, everything. Time passes, and all I want is the intimacy that slows, defeats. and confounds it. Love, that's what it is. You've always made the mistake that men often make, and carried forward the great fault that mars civilisation, which is that you believe that your philosophy is deeper than love.

Remember, what we are trying to do in this life is to shatter time and bring back the dead. Rise, Virginia. Rise and see the whole world." Virginia

If people love you for your soul, your face doesn't matter and you don't have to be perfect.

He wanted actually to live inside the dream that captured his eye, to spend his days and nights in a fume of burnished gold.

We like it the way it is. We're enjoying the oscillating balances, the ongoing war between good and evil, the wonderful small triumphs of the soul. Perhaps it's too soon to end all that. Perhaps we need some more time to think things out.

It is said that marriage is a long war between ancient families trapped in close proximity by lust.

One shouldn't ever do anything to protect one's dignity. You either have it or you don't.

an old man with a cane may discover that his many years have added nothing to his innocence but proof and explanation, and that, as much as he may have learned in his long life, he cannot see as far as he could see when he was seven

Because I don't need oxygen. I've already come to all my conclusions. I'm just slowly gliding down. Someday I'll be as light as a feather.

When you're alone you can long so hard for something like an embrace that you mine it from the air. You find it in meanings that you might not otherwise grasp, for which it is helpful to arise early in the morning, when the mind is clear and the heart is gentle.

And if you were a spirit, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then there you would wait for someone to return, and the story to unfold.

How the holy and the profane mix in the light of day and at the end of life is sometimes the most beautiful thing in this world and a compassionate entry into the next. After failure and defeat, a concentration upon certain beauties, though forever lost and unretrievable, can lift the wounded past roundedness and the dying past dying, protecting them with an image, still and bright, that will ride with them on their long ride, never to fade and never to retreat.

They knew that to survive in Manhattan he would have to know something of bitterness before he arrived.

For a gift that does not find balance and a service that is not returned are worth less than a curse.