A Note on Don DeLillo's Mao II

I did not love the novel Mao II by Don DeLillo. I have not finished reading it yet and I’m not certain I’m going to.

The cover of the book I did not love but am writing about now.

While it’s not the best novel I’ve read, it may contain one of the best two-sentence punches I’ve read. This line has gotten lodged in my brain and I feel the need to share it with anyone I can:

We understand how reality is invented. A person sits in a room and thinks a thought and it bleeds out into the world.

It occurs during a conversation between two characters, Charlie and Bill. One of them says this out loud. There is more to this conversation, and if you like these words you may want to read the whole book. The book was written in 1991, but in those words it seems Delillo predicted and summarized the entirety of the rest of human history to follow.

That’s all I’ll write about this, for now.