I’ve never had a cup of coffee in my life. I can’t even remain in the same room with coffee. Mark Helprin Read Quote
My father was famous for his photographic memory. He was in the OSS. They trained him to be captured on purpose and to read upside down and backwards and commit to memory every document in Germany he saw as he was being interrogated – every schedule on every wall. So, that photographic memory somehow made its way to me when I was young. Mark Helprin Read Quote
My father ran London Films. He made films like ‘The Red Shoes,’ ‘The Third Man.’ And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with him. Also, I went to school with their children. Mark Helprin Read Quote
When I was very young, I used to clean up after my parents. If I stay in a hotel, I make the bed and clean the room when I get up, even the bathroom mirror, for which I carry a tiny bottle of ammonia. Mark Helprin Read Quote
Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It’s just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example. Mark Helprin Read Quote
The craftless anarchy of the Beat poets on the one hand, and the extreme control of Henry James on the other, suggest that for most human beings, just as both freedom and discipline are necessary in life, serendipity and design must coexist in a work to make it readable. Mark Helprin Read Quote
The greatest fight is when you are fighting in the smoke and cannot see with your eyes. Mark Helprin Read Quote
If Shakespeare thought comedy worthwhile, that means the rest of us can take a break from tragedy now and then without betraying our calling, even if the modern professional intellectual, a poseur by nature, has yet to discover this. Mark Helprin Read Quote
