“Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies.”

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.