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Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes

Total quotes: 31
“Have no fear, you will find your way. It’s in your bones. It’s in your soul.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, A quote by Mark Z. Danielewski
Tagged: Fear, Figuring Out Life, strength, Self-Trust
“Explanation is not half as strong as experience but experience is not half as strong as experience and understanding.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: explanation, Experience, Understanding
“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of not knowing.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: maturity, Uncertainty
“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, House of Leaves
Tagged: nightmares, Night Terrors, Afraid
“Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Love, Heartbroken, Life, Death
“The finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: seeing, Paying Attention, Ignoring
“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, House of Leaves
Tagged: Depression, Fuck, upset
“The greatest love letters are always encoded for the one and not the many.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Love, Love Letters, Personalization
“Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: beauty, looks, Beautiful
“Look at Ahab's whale. Now there's a great symbol. Some say it stands for god, meaning, and purpose. Others say it stands for purposelessness and the void. But what we sometimes forget is that Ahab's whale was also just a whale.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Symbols, Writing, Metaphors
“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Light, Reflect, Deflect
“And there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Death, Material Items, Bodies
“Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Writers, Books, Writing
“Come morning I found the day as I have found every other day -- without relief or explanation.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Relief, explanation, Days
“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 angles of personality, the riddle of a soul.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Errors, Mistakes, Spell Check
“Not all complex problems have easy solutions; so says science (so warns science.)”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Science, solutions, Problems
“FUCK. A great by-the-bootstrap prayer or curse of you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Curse Words, Prayers, Fuck
“Whoever said feeling right meant doing right, knew nothing about living right.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May
Tagged: Feeling, Living, actions
“Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Knowledge, Time, Space
“There is no such thing as the last straw. There is only hay.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Last Straw, Hay, Effort
“I'm so tired. Sleep's been stalking me for too long to remember.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Sleep, Tired, stalker
“Get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Dictionary, Words, Writing
“Do not entrust your future to the limits of your stride.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Future, Limitations, Dreams
“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, Honeysuckle & Pain
Tagged: Future, Past, Missing
“I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Wants, desires, Needs
“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, House of Leaves
Tagged: Hard Work, Passion, Patience, Career
“We all create stories to protect ourselves.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Lies, pretending, Stories
“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.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Time, Sleeping, Murder
“'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, House of Leaves
Tagged: Reading, Books, latin
“What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unmourned, well, you get the drift.

As a counselor once told me -- a counselor for Disaffected Yought, I might add: 'You like that crap because it reminds you of you.' Couldn't of said it better or put it more bluntly. Don't even disagree with it either.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Hoarder, Material Items, Shadows
“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.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: poor, rich, charity
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