White Noise

by Don DeLillo

“For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.”

I feel sad for people and the queer part we play in our own disasters.

I tell myself I have reached an age, the age of unreliable menace. The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities.

Look past the violence, Jack. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun.”

Isn’t death the boundary we need? Doesn’t it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.”

War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.”

This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other.

I’ll tell you what the afterlife is. It’s a sweet and terribly touching idea. You can take it or leave it.

Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions.”

The gun created a second reality for me to inhabit. The air was bright, swirling around my head. Nameless feelings pressed thrillingly on my chest. It was a reality I could control, secretly dominate.