“No matter what it is, if you don’t move your eyes and set the pace yourself, your intellect is sentenced to death. The mind, you see, is like a muscle. For it to remain agile and strong, it must work. Television rules that out.”

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.