“Adversity has its compensations, that in falling, and in failing, we rise. It is as if there is a hand behind us that sets to right all imbalances. Why do you think the saints seldom had the temporal power that we mistakenly identify with the fruits of justice? Do you think they needed it, or cared?”

American-Israeli novelist and journalist

Mark Helprin is an American-Israeli novelist, journalist, conservative commentator, and former policeman. He is known for fiction that moves across different genres and styles, and for a public voice that stands apart from literary fashions. Helprin has said that he belongs to no literary school, movement, tendency, or trend. Beyond his novels and journalism, he has served as Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, been a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.