Mark Z Danielewski Quotes

Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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

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

By his own admission, Tom is nothing like his brother. He has neither the fierce ambition nor the compulsion for risk taking. ... Will relied on aggression to anchor the world while Tom passively accepted whatever the world would give or take away. Consequently Tom won no awards, achieved no fame, ... He drifted, bending to daily pressures, never protesting when he was deprived of what he should have rightfully claimed as his own. In his sad trip downstream, Tom dulled the pain with alcohol and a few joints a day - what he called his 'friendly haze'. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it's mine. ~ 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

Your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. ~ 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

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

We both thrive in the late hours, appreciate its sad taste and never get in the way of each other's dreams, even though Lude just wants more money, better parties and prettier girls and 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. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite destiny* - a moment commonly referred to as "the big bang" - approximately 1.3-2 x 10^10 years ago.

*Typo: "destiny" should read "density. ~ 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

Sometimes how you talk is all you got. Even if your talk is wrong. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it. ~ 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

If one invests some interest in, for example, a tree and begins to form some thoughts about this tree then writes these thoughts down, further examining the meanings that surface, allowing for unconscious associations to take place, writing all this down as well, until the subject of the tree branches off into the subject of the shelf, that person will enjoy immense psychological benefits. ~ 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

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

Oh Shnorhk, how beautifully you speak Armenian, the third thing I miss most about you. The second thing I miss most about you: how beautifully you play."
Shnorhk not say anything. What trying to say only take away. Shnorhk just scald throat with more tea and eat cake after cake.
Grateful still, in the end, that Mnatsagan, always kind, is kind enough not to say the first thing he miss so much. ~ 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

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

Books are curious things.
When they want to live, the find a way
to become part of the lives
that need them."

From: The Familiar vol. 2: Into the Forest ~ 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

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

You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space. ~ 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

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

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

Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you've never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you've got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

I miss u i love you
there's no second ive lived you can't call your own ~ 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

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

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

You could not believe what one sigh articulates. What one laugh creates. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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. ~ 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

Not that she could have chosen to have the wind move through her hair the way it did, or commanded the sunlight to brighten her eyes. What she did had nothing to do with hair or eyes but with the way she moved that made the sky seem to long for her. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Immensely clever story, and quite creepy, in a delightfully scary way. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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

I looked at my hands. I was holding onto the steering wheel so tightly, all my knuckles where shiny points of white, and my blinker was on, CLICK-click CLICK-click CLICK-click, so certain, so plain, so clear, and yet for all its mechanical conviction, blinking me in the wrong direction. ~ 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

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

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

By now you've probably noticed that except when safely contained by quotes, Zampanò always steers clear of such questionable four-letter language. This instance in particular proves that beneath all that cool psuedo-academic hogwash lurked a very passionate man who knew how important it was to say "fuck" now and then, and say it loud too, relish its syllabic sweetness, its immigrant pride, a great American epic word really, starting at the lower lip, often the very front of the lower lip, before racing all the way to the back of the throat, where it finishes with a great blast, the concussive force of the K catching up then with the hush of the F already on its way, thus loading it with plenty of offense and edge and certainly ambiguity. FUCK. A great by-the-bootstrap prayer or curse if you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world, or sometimes, if said just right, for uttering with enough love and fire, the woman beside you melts inside herself, immersed in all that word-heat. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

How much [vastly {immensely (unfathomably) tremendously}...] Anwar loves [t]his child. It continues to take him by surprise [even when she confounds him with the havoc of her room {for example} which she will proudly describe {defend!} as clean {those beautiful messes (beautiful even today)} even as {in the next moment} she will astonish Anwar with her fearless interest in life {despite the harrowing blows life continues to deliver her (and so delivers to Anwar...)}]. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

How much [vastly {immensely tremendously}...] Anwar loves [t]his child. It continues to take him by surprise [even when she confounds him with the havoc of her room {for example} which she will proudly describe {defend!} as clean {those beautiful messes } even as {in the next moment} she will astonish Anwar with her fearless interest in life {despite the harrowing blows life continues to deliver her }]. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

I'm so tired. Sleep's been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ~ 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

He loved more than anything to fly. His sole conflict was with gravity. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book. ~ 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

Words will heal your heart. If you ever come to disregard everything I've told you, believe at least this much: your words and only your words will heal your heart. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

The ripe earth
yawns daily to
swallow me.

Love's love in her blackest season, ~ 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

What did God really know about brothers (or for that matter sisters)? He was after all an only child and before it all an equally lonely father. ~ 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

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

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. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Footnote 164: "I finally hooked up with Ashley. I went over to her place yesterday morning. Early. She lives in Venice. Her eyebrows look like flakes of sunlight. Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground. And for the life of me I didn't know who she was or where we met... We sat down and I wanted to talk. I wanted to ask her who she was, where we'd met, been before, but she just smiled and held my hand as we lay down on the hammock and started to swing above all those dead leaves... Before I left she told me our story: where we met - Texas - kissed, but never made love and this had confused and haunted her and she had needed it before she got married which was in four months to a man she loved who made a living manufacturing TNT exclusively for a highway construction firm up in Colorado where he frequently went on business trips and where one night, drunk, angry and disappointed he had invited a hooker back to his motel room and so on and who cared and what was I doing here anyway?... I was still hurting, abandoned, drank three glasses of bourbon and fumed on some weed, then came here, thinking of voices, real and imagined, of ghosts, my ghost, of her, at long last, in this idiotic footnote, when she gently pushed me out her door and I said quietly 'Ashley' causing her to stop pushing me and ask 'yes?' her eyes bright with something she saw that I could never see though what she saw was me, and me not caring now at least knowing the truth and telling her the truth: 'I've ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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

Sometimes it's just silent ... No sound at all.
'Does that scare you?'
Chad nods.
'Why?' asks his father.
'It's like something's waiting. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don't let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can't see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact that you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That's where it is. Right at this moment. But don't look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead take and even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, how hard it's gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with it's teeth or are they nails?, don't worry, that particular detail doesn't matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms – you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book – you won't have time to even scream.

Don't look.

I didn't. ~ 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

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

Photojournalism has frequently been lambasted for being the product of circumstance. In fact rarely are any of these images considered in terms of their composition and semantic intent. They are merely news, a happy intersection of event and opportunity. It hardly helps that photographs in general also take only a fraction of a second to acquire.

It is incredible how so many people can constantly misread speed to mean ease. This is certainly most common where photography is concerned. However simply because anyone can buy a camera, shutter away, and then with a slightly prejudiced eye justify the product does not validate the achievement. Shooting a target with a rifle is accomplished with similar speed and yet because the results are so objective no one suggests that marksmanship is easy. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night. ~ 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

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

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

...recogniz[ing] the dangerous influence the unknown naturally has on everyone." P.60 ~ 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

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

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

Ever see yourself doing something in the past and no matter how many times you remember it you still want to scream stop, somehow redirect the action, reorder the present? ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

We never even kissed or looked into each other's eyes. Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my only tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

We did not just go to the stars. We became the stars. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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

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.
I miss you. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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

Of course curiosity killed the cat, and even if satisfaction supposedly brought it back, there's still that little problem with the man on the radio telling me more and more about some useless information. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

We stopped talking about Zampanô then. She paged her friend Christina who took less than twenty minutes to come over. There were no introductions. We just sat down on the floor and snorted lines of coke off a CD case, gulped down a bottle of wine and then used it to play spin the bottle. They kissed each other first, then they both kissed me, and then we forgot about the bottle, and I even managed to forget about Zampanô, about this, and about how much that attack in the tattoo shop had put me on edge. Two kisses in one kiss was all it took, a comfort, a warmth, perhaps temporary, perhaps false, but reassuring nonetheless, and mine, and theirs, ours, all three of us giggling, insane giggles and laughter with still more kisses on the way, and I remember a brief instant then, out of the blue, when I suddenly glimpsed my own father, a rare but oddly peaceful recollection, as if he actually approved of my play in the way he himself had always laughed and played, always laughing, surrendering to its ease, especially when he soared in great updrafts of light, burning off distant plateaus of bistre & sage, throwing him up like an angel, high above the red earth, deep into the sparkling blank, the tender sky that never once let him down, preserving his attachment to youth, propriety and kindness, his plane almost, but never quite, outracing his whoops of joy, trailing him in his sudden turn to the wind, followed then by a near vertical climb up to the angles of the sun, and I was ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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

Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ~ 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

Mad woman on another tour;
Everything she is she spits out on the floor.
An old man tells me she's sicker than the rest.
God I've never been afraid like this. ~ 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

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. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

It is understood that the world does not want to be understood. The world would not be this world if it did. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

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

You have to let the water run awhile and even though it remains icy, part of you still refuses to believe it won´t change, especially if you wait a little longer or open up the valve a little more. So you wait but no matter how many minutes run by, you still see no steam, you still feel no heat. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Who has never killed an hour? ... ~ 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

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

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

Known.
Some.
Call.
Is.
Air.
Am? ~ 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

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