[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. โจHe is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way heโs carrying a gun. โจThis is one of the essential images in American mythology.
Don DeLilloStories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.
Don DeLilloThere is a balance, a kind of standoff between the time continuum and the human entity, our frail bundle of soma and psyche. We eventually succumb to time, it's true, but time depends on us. We carry it in our muscles and genes, pass it on to the next set of time-factoring creatures, our brown-eyed daughters and jug-eared sons, or how would the world keep going. Never mind the time theorists, the cesium devices that measure the life and death of the smallest silvery trillionth of a second.... We were the only crucial clocks, our minds and bodies, way stations for the distribution of time.
Don DeLillo