David Markson Quotes

Oedipus gouges out his eyes, Jocasta hangs herself, both guiltless; the play has come to a harmonious conclusion. Wrote Schiller.

In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.

What do any of us ever truly know?

One never does solve what it is about watching fires, really.

Helen ran off with a lover only once in her life herself, and for three thousand years nobody would ever let her forget about it.

One can very agreeably ignore a rain by walking in it.
In fact it is when one allows a rain to prevent one from walking in it that one is failing to ignore it.
Surely by saying, dear me, I will get soaked through and through if I walk in this rain, for instance, one is in no way ignoring the rain.

Petrarch sometimes wrote letters to long-dead authors. He was also a dedicated hunter of classic manuscripts. Once, after discovering some previously unknown works of Cicero, he wrote Cicero the news.

Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.

I still notice the burned house, mornings, when I walk along the beach. Well, obviously I do not notice the house. What I notice is what remains of the house. One is still prone to think of a house as a house, however, even if there is not remarkably much left of it.

A simple creature unlettyrde. Julian of Norwich called herself.
The most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. Echoed Jane Austen - four hundred years afterward.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

The morning's recollection of the emptiness of the day before. Its anticipation of the emptiness of the day to come.

How miraculous it was, noted Diogenes, that whenever one felt that sort of urge, one could readily masturbate. But conversely how disheartening that one could not simply rub one's stomach when hungry.

You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michaelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce - to which in fact he was once taken.
Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne - who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

Once, I had a dream of fame. Generally, even then, I was lonely.

Still, how I nearly felt. In the midst of all that looking.

How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?

On the other hand it is probably safe to assume that Rembrandt and Spinoza surely would have at least passed on the street, now and again.
Or even run into each other quite frequently, if only at some neighborhood shop or other.
And certainly they would have exchanged amenities as well, after a time.
Good morning, Rembrandt. Good morning to you, Spinoza.
I was extremely sorry to hear about your bankruptcy, Rembrandt. I was extremely sorry to hear about your excommunication, Spinoza.
Do have a good day, Rembrandt. Do have the same, Spinoza.
All of this would have been said in Dutch, incidentally.
I mention that simply because it is known that Rembrandt did not speak any other language except Dutch.
Even if Spinoza may have preferred Latin. Or Jewish.

In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.

Was it Brigid Brophy who gave up on a certain Virginia Woolf novel when she discovered that Woolf believed one needed a corkscrew to open a bottle of champagne?

You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

Or was it possibly...nothing more than a read?

Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.

I like Mr. Dickens' books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackeray's daughters.

Unquestionably it would have been Mary Magdalene who did the dishes at the Last Supper.
Concluded Marguerite Yourcenar.

If one wishes to see a cat badly enough, one will doubtless see one.

Although what I have basically been doing about the rain is ignoring it, to tell the truth.
How I do that is by walking in it.
I did not fail to notice that those last two sentences must certainly look like a contradiction, by the way.
Even if they are on such thing.
One can very agreeably ignore a rain by walking in it.
In fact it is when one allows a rain to prevent one from walking in it that one is failing to ignore it.

Tennessee Williams choked to death on the plastic cap of a nasal spray.