Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes & Sayings

Also remember, love inhabits more than just the heart and mind. If need be it can take shelter in a big toe. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Words need worlds in order to be worlds. worlds though don't need words in order to be worlds. — Mark Z. Danielewski

The finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else. — Mark Z. Danielewski

One glance at her, even now in the glass of my mind, and I want to take off and travel with her. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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

My point being, what if my attacks are enterly unrelated attributable in fact to something entirely else, perhaps for instance just warning shocks brought on by my own crumbling biology, tiny flakes of unknown chemical origin already burning holes through the fabric of my mind, dismantling memories, undoing even the strongest powers of imagination and reason?
how then do you fly from that path? — Mark Z. Danielewski

It is hungry, it it immortal. Worse, it knows nothing of whim. — Mark Z. Danielewski

But tomorrow came faster than expected, as if the future were never somewhere else, but all along part of the fabric of every present, merely untwining itself again and again into a new distinction that could never be new again. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

To read" actually comes from the Latin reri "to calculate, to think" which is not only the progenitor of "read" but of "reason" as well, both of which hail from the Greek arariskein "to fit." Aside from giving us "reason," arariskein also gives us an unlikely sibling, Latin arma meaning "weapons." It seems that "to fit" the world or to make sense of it requires either reason or arms. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share. — Mark Z. Danielewski

The greatest love letters are always encoded for the one and not the many. — Mark Z. Danielewski

To repeat: her voice has life. It possesses a quality not present in the original, revealing how a nymph can return a different and more meaningful story, in spite of telling the same story. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate. And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only science. — Mark Z. Danielewski

And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Wake & Bake. More like Wash & Bake. Half a bowl of cereal and a shot of bourbon later, I'm there, my friendly haze having finally arrived. I'm ready for work. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only God's echoes and God is Narcissus. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Remember you future counselors and bringers of relief: there will never be a cure for life's problems because so many of tomorrow's problems will be new. Good words, like good work and good thinking, help, even if good words are a lot like highway paint. They can keep plenty of heavy things moving at 70 MPH from going the wrong way. But that doesn't mean life won't cross over if it has to. Learn to avoid the collisions. Find other directions. Often a new yes is the best no. Life lived well doesn't get easier but it does get better. Learn to let things go by. And don't be reluctant: life is al[l]ways surpassing us by. Enjoy it. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Love's love in her blackest season. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Darkness is impossible to remember. Consequently cavers desire to return to those unseen depths where they have just been. It is an addiction. No one is ever satisfied. Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. — Mark Z. Danielewski

When a pebble falls down a well, it is gratifying to hear the eventual plunk. If, however, the pebble only slips into darkness and vanishes without a sound, the effect is disquieting. In the case of a verbal echo, spoken word acts as the pebble and the subsequent repetition serves as "the plunk." In this way, speaking can result in a form of "seeing" ... — Mark Z. Danielewski

For some reason, I've been thinking more and more about my mother and the way her life failed her, humiliated her with impulses beyond her command, broke her with year after year of the same. — Mark Z. Danielewski

You're writing like a freshman.' And he replied- I remember this very distinctly: 'We always look for doctors but sometimes we're lucky to find a frosh. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Have no fear, you will find your way. It's in your bones. it's in your soul. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, 'You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.' And she's absolutely right. In some ways, genre is a marketing tool. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I was twelve miles from no where. — Mark Z. Danielewski

The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I'm so tired. Sleep's been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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

The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I must read.
I must read.
I must read. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left of romance, still hiding in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar. Sometimes it's even just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a Voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard by even the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all. — Mark Z. Danielewski

It's too annoying. Too me. — Mark Z. Danielewski

You wouldn't believe how much harder it's getting for me to just leave my studio. It's really sad. In fact these days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Here then - the after math of meaning. A liftime finished between the space of two frames. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of 'not knowing. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

There is no such thing as the last straw. There is only hay. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Hopefully you'll be able to make sense of what I can represent though still fail to understand. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I live at the end of some interminable corridor which the lucky damned can call hell but which the much unluckier atheists - and your mother heads up that bunch- must simply get used to calling home. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Come morning I found the day as I have found every other day
without relief or explanation. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Both pieces are similar in one way:what one could believe, one doubts. Nicoise because one depends upon the moral sense of the filmmaker, The Navidson Record because one depends upon the moral sense of the world. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night. — Mark Z. Danielewski

'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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

for as leaves are to limbs, so are your words to your soul — Mark Z. Danielewski

There once was a poor man who walked around without shoes. His feet were covered in calluses. One day a rich man felt sorry for the poor man and bought him a pair of Nikes. The poor man was extremely grateful and wore the shoes constantly.
Well after a year or so, the shoes fell apart. So the poor man had to go back to running around barefoot, only now all his calluses were gone and his feet got all cut up and soon the cuts became infected and the man got sick and eventually, after they cut off his legs, he died.
I call that particular story "Love, Death & Nikes." A real cheer me up story for Mr. Monster. That's right! All for you. Oh and something else: fuck you Mr. Monster. — Mark Z. Danielewski

At the heart of any terror is the fear of losing what we find meaningful. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I'm all soils west when the Earth lets go. I'm a thousand Julys. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it's mine. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

...life's big. If you can't fix it, give it a spin. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I went outside. Tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of my retina, so that when I finally did turn to face the dark surrounding forest I thought I saw the billion eyes of a billion cats blinking out, in the math of the living, the sum of the universe, the stories of history , a life older than anyone could have ever imagined. And even after they were gone
fading away together, as if they really were one
something still lingered in those sweet folds of black pine , sitting quietly, almost as if it too were waiting for something to wake. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Our newness lies only in parts rearranged. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Tom gets by, Navidson succeeds. Tom just wants to be, Navidson must become. And yet despite such obvious differences, anyone who looks past Tom's wide grin and considers his eyes will find surprisingly deep pools of sorrow. Which is how we know they are brothers, because like Tom, Navidson's eyes share the same water. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Not only had Navidson carried Karen out of that house, he had picked her up a hundred times over the course of eleven years and carried her fear, her torment, and her distance. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Do we miss not only the past but every future the lost past describes? Is that just the nature of missing? All the lost might-have-beens? The certainty that those uncertain futures are gone? If we can't embrace uncertainty do we miss the point of love? — Mark Z. Danielewski

All I hope for is one moment of rational thought and a shot at action before I'm lost to a great saddening madness, pithed at the hands of my own stumbling biology.

[Johnny Truant] — Mark Z. Danielewski

No gunfire, famine, or flies. Just lots of toothpaste, gardening and people stuff. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Through all the windows I only see infinity. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Death, it turns out, is the mother of all conflicts. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Okay, you can be my slave.
My flying kick nicks his nose.
A warning. Worse if I weren't
succumbing to squeal.
What a feel.
I'm too multiple to feel.
A fork ahead.
I take both. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. It's probably not even real. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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

You got a death wish, Truant?' Which was the thing that scared me. 'Cause maybe I did. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I am not a fool. I am wise. I will run from my fear, I will outdistance my fear, then I will hide from my fear, I will wait for my fear, I will let my fear run past me, then I will follow my fear, I will track my fear until I can approach my fear in complete silence, then I will strike at my fear, I will charge my fear, I will grab hold of my fear, I will sink my fingers into my fear, then I will bite my fear, I will tear the throat of my fear, I will break the neck of my fear, I will drink the blood of my fear, I will gulp the flesh of my fear, I will crush the bones of my fear, and I will savor my fear, I will swallow my fear, all of it, and then I will digest my fear until I can do nothing else but shit out my fear. In this way I will be made stronger — Mark Z. Danielewski

Who has never killed an hour? ... — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I guess I'm hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control, especially if I sense the dullness inside me get too heavy and thick, warning me that something is again approaching, creeping slowly towards my room, no figment of my imagination either but as tangible as you and I, never ceasing to scratch, waiting, perhaps for a word or an order or some other kind of sign to at last initiate this violent and by now inevitable confrontation - always as full of wrath as I am full of fear. — Mark Z. Danielewski

The seriousness of emotional deprivation:
It is not difficult to understand how children who have suffered from malnutrition or starvation need food and plenty of care in their bodies are to recover so they can go on to lead normal lives. If, however, the starvation is severe enough, the damage will be permanent and they will suffer physical impairments for the rest of their lives. Likewise, children who are deprived of emotional nurturing require care and love if their sense of security and self-confidence is to be restored. However, if love is minimal and abuse high, the damage will be permanent and the children will suffer emotional impairments for the rest of their lives. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Aside from recurrance, revision, and commensurate symbolic reference, echoes also reveal emptiness. Since objects always impede acoustic reflection, only empty places can create echoes of lasting clarity. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Since when did you bring a gun?" Navidson asks, crouching near the door.
"Are you kidding me? This place is scary. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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

Riddles: They either delight or torment. Their delight lies in solutions. Answers provide bright moments of comprehension perfectly suited for children who still inhabit a world where solutions are readily available. Implicit in the riddle's form is a promise that the rest of the world resolves just as easily. And so riddles comfort the child's mind which spins wildly before the onslaught of so much information and so many subsequent questions.
The adult world, however, produces riddles of a different variety. They do not have answers and are often called enigmas or paradoxes. Still the old hint of the riddle's form corrupts these questions by the echoing the most fundamental lesson: there must be an answer. From there comes torment. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I'm not independently wealthy. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Perhaps in the margins of darkness, I could create a son who is not missing; who lives beyond even my own imagination and invention; whose lusts, stupidities, and strengths carry him farther than even he or I can anticipate; who sees the world for what it is; and consequently bears the burden of everyone's tomorrow with unprecedented wisdom and honor because he is one of the very few who has successfully interrogated his own nature. His shields are instantly available though seldom used. And those who value him shall prosper while those who would destroy him shall perish. He will fulfill a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

There is only a black fence
and a wide field and a barn of Wyeth red.
The smell of anger chokes the air.
Ravens of September rain descend.
Some say a mad mad hermit man lived here
talking to himself and the woodchuck.
But he's gone. No reason. No sense.
He just wandered off one day,
past the onions, past the fence.
Forget the letters. Forget love.
Troy is nothing more than
a black finger of charcoal
frozen in lake ice.
And near where the owl watches
and the old bear dreams,
the parapet of memory burns to the ground
taking heaven with it. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

He is a stem, a husk, barren and thin, withered by sun, erased by wind, emptied by seasons of dullness, marked by seconds of duty, scarred by regret only the faintest of lines dare to write out, which no one, not even him, can interpret anymore. People have told him a crow will reveal more than anything his face has to share. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Which in the gray of gentler eyes will prove far more than any of us could ever need; 'enough' we will shout, 'enough!' our bellies full, our hearts full, our ages full; fullness and greater fullness and even more fullness; how then we will laugh and forget how imagining has already left us. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

The world only mattered because people lived there and sometimes, in spite of the pain, tragedy, and degradation, even managed to triumph there. — Mark Z. Danielewski

- Whenever we roam be beside me.
When you're allone. When you go.
When no one comes along. And for all we
Wander. Encounter and open
Allways curl up with me.
Give me pain, past and fury.
Betray my way. I won't abandon you.- — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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. — Mark Z. Danielewski

What is boredom? Endless repetitions, like, for example, Navidson's corridors and rooms, which are consistently devoid of any Myst-like discoveries thus causing us to lose interest. What then makes anything exciting? Or better yet: what is exciting? While the degree varies, we are always excited by anything that engages us, influences us or more simply involves us. In those endlessly repetitive hallways and stairs, there is nothing for us to connect with. That permanently foreign place does not excite us. It bores us. And that is that, except for the fact that there is no such thing as boredom. Boredom is really a psychic defense protecting us from ourselves, from complete paralysis, by repressing, among other things, the meaning of that place, which in this case is and always has been horror. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there. p. 591 — Mark Z. Danielewski