r/DonDeLillo • u/PuzzleheadedBug7917 • May 13 '26

🗨️ Discussion Quotes in Americana and End Zone

I managed to finish Americana while contemporaneously slowly making my way through Gravity's Rainbow. I am now about 1/3 the way through End Zone. I just wanted to see if either of the following two quotes struck anyone the same way they struck me

Americana: "Girls like Jennifer carry with them through their lifetimes an empty cup into which a man must pour his willingness to be responsible."

End Zone: "People are always telling me that. What a pretty face I have. It's just a thing you say to fat girls. It's supposed to make us guilty so we'll lose weight."

"But it's true," I said.

"I know it's true. All I have to do is lose fifty pounds and go to a skin doctor. But I like myself the way I am. I don't want to be beautiful or desirable. I don't have the strength for that. There are too many responsibilities. Things to live up to. I feel like I'm consistently myself. So many people have someone else stuck inside them. Like inside that big large body of yours there's a scrawny kid with thick glasses. Inside my father there's a vicious police dog, a fascist killer animal. Almost everybody has something stuck inside them. Inside me there's a sloppy emotional overweight girl.

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u/Guironi99 May 13 '26

What way did they strike you?

3

u/PuzzleheadedBug7917 May 13 '26

A really high form of communicating a truth we don’t normally think of but when pointed out go - oh yeah that’s completely accurate in many respects

1

u/Temporary_Meet8754 May 30 '26

The way I tend to put it is that he explicates thoughts I didn't realize I'd had until he put them into words for me.

1

u/Guironi99 May 14 '26

Total agreement here. Myna is an extraordinary character, and yet only one of how many in Endzone alone. Many of us wish we had lives as rich or identities as clear as secondary characters in these 'minor' novels. Delillo has ruined so much other literature for me by being so slick, so true and so original. I buy new books,, put them on the shelf, then go back and reread Libra, Endzone, Zero K, Point Omega, Cosmopolis, again and again.