Top 84 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Z. Danielewski

Anger is one way to respond to fear. I say one way because responses are categorically multiple.

I'm a big believer in big books, and that doesn't necessarily mean long books.

Literature is capable of being a subject that people want to catch up on or discuss, whether at a coffee shop or a watercooler. It can become an intrinsic part of their dialogue.

I'm not independently wealthy.

At the heart of any terror is the fear of losing what we find meaningful.

'Lord of the Rings' was a set of books in which the world had been conceived before the characters were placed within that context.

'House of Leaves' is certainly about the unsettling nature of fear - and it was my aim to address that - but it's also about recovering from fear.

Write what you love. Love will hold you through the hard times and hold the world during the good times.

At the breakfast table we are footnoting everything that we read. We don't recognise it as such but we encounter an article in the newspaper and then suddenly we recall that a friend had a certain comment on that particular story, a certain bit of news that we saw on the television applies to that and we immediately assemble an idea of a story.

I believe the structure of 'House of Leaves' is far more difficult to explain than it is to read. And while I'd like to lay claim to some extraordinary act of originality, truth is I'm only taking advantage of capabilities inherent in everyone.

Even the closest relationships that I have I know could potentially fall away. That's not to speak pessimistically or negatively about those relationships. In a weird way, it's the opposite. I value them.

My interest is in how meaning is communicated via language, and I believe the shape, positioning, even the color of the language has an effect on meaning.

Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila.

I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.

Stories heard but not recalled. Letters too. Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad inreparable way.

Do not wake me from this slumber, but be assured that just as I have wept much, I have also wandered many roads with my thoughts.

Youth always tries to fill the void, an old man learns to live with it.

Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground.

Back on shore everyone was pretty messed up, but the owner/captain was by far the worst off. He ended up drunk for a week, though the only thing he ever said was "So?" The boat's gone. "So?" Your mate's dead. "So?" Hey at least you're alive. "So?" An awful word but it does harden you. It hardened me.

Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.

Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one.

We all create stories to protect ourselves.

Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it.

No gunfire, famine, or flies. Just lots of toothpaste, gardening and people stuff.

Even the brightest magnesium flare can do little against such dark except blind the eyes of the one holding it. Thus one craves what by seeing one has in fact not seen.

People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been just another word for darkness. Blind encounters writing sonnets no one can ever read. Desire and pain communicated in the vague language of sex. None of which made sense to me until much later when I realized everything I thought I'd retained of my encounters added up to so very little, hardly enduring, just shadows of love outlining nothing at all.

He [Zampano] probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic, but I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angels of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.

Who has never killed an hour?

Come morning I found the day as I have found every other day--without relief or explanation.

Losing the possibility of something is the exact same thing as losing hope and without hope nothing can survive.

The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours.

You shall be my roots and I will be your shade, though the sun burns my leaves. You shall quench my thirst and I will feed you fruit, though time takes my seed. And when I'm lost and can tell nothing of this earth you will give me hope. And my voice you will always hear. And my hand you will always have. For I will shelter you. And I will comfort you. And even when we are nothing left, not even in death, I will remember you.

Have no fear, you will find your way. It's in your bones. It's in your soul.

Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.

Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both brothers learned to identify with absence. Consequently, even if something beneficial fortuitously entered their lives they immediately treated it as temporary. By the time they were teenagers they were already accustomed to a discontinuous lifestyle marked by constant threats of abandonment and the lack of any emotional stability. Unfortunately, "accustomed to" here is really synonymous with "damaged by.

This great blue world of ours is but a house of leaves, moments before the wind.

Little solace comes to those who grieve when thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind.

I think that's what finally stopped me. I slid right to the edge. My legs were hanging over. And I could feel it too. I don't know how. There was no wind, no sound, no change of temperature. There was just this terrible emptiness reaching up for me.

So often I wonder whether it is my right to capitalize, as I feel, so often, on the grief of others. But then I justify, in my own particular thoughts, by feeling that I can contribute a little to the understanding of what others are going through; then there is reason for doing it.

Very soon he will vanish completely in the wings of his own wordless stanza. [ ] but his stanza is not completely empty [ * ]

Why did god create a dual universe? So he might say ‘Be not like me. I am alone.' And it might be heard.

And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.

What miracle is this? This giant tree. It stands ten thousand feet high But doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands. Its roots must hold the sky.

Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful.

The thread has snapped. No sound even to mark the breaking let alone the fall. That long anticipated disintegration, when the darkest angel of all, the horror beyond all horrors, sits at last upon my chest, permanently enfolding me in its great covering wings, black as ink, veined in Bees' purple. A creature without a voice. A voice without a name. As immortal as my life. Come here at long last to summon the wind.

I want something else. I'm not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it's drenched in sunlight and it's weightless and I know it's not cheap. Probably not even real

Keep true to the rare music in your heart, to the marvelous and unique form that is and shall always be nothing else but you. Keep to that and you can do no wrong, which I realize is easier said than done.

I do not know anything about Art with a capital A. What I do know about is my art. Because it concerns me. I do not speak for others. So I do not speak for things which profess to speak for others. My art, however, speaks for me. It lights my way.

The finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.

House of Leaves is certainly about the unsettling nature of fear - and it was my aim to address that - but its also about recovering from fear.

...she still cannot resist looking out the window every couple of minutes. The sound of a passing truck causes her to glance away. Even if there is no sound, the weight of a hundred seconds always turns her head.

Heart may still be the fire in hearth but I'm suddenly too cold to continue, and besides, there's no hearth here anyway and it's the end of June. Thursday. Almost noon. And all the buttons on my corduroy coat are gone. I don't know why. I'm sorry Hailey. I don't know what to do.

No one ever really gets used to nightmares.

I took my morning walk, I took my evening walk, I ate something, I thought about something, I wrote, I napped and dreamt something too, and with all that something, I still have nothing because so much of sum’thing has always been and always will be you.

Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.

My hands resemble some ancient tree: the roots that bind up the earth, the rock and the ceaselessly nibbling wordms.

Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.

Through all the windows I only see infinity.