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50 Quotes That Will Mess With Your Mind From Horror Writer Mark Z. Danielewski

Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.
Holly Riordan
March 14, 2017
“Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only God’s echoes and God is Narcissus.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: God, Echoes, Narcissus
“Get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Dictionary, Words, Writing
“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
“Love inhabits more than just the heart and mind.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Love, Hearts, minds
“There is no such thing as the last straw. There is only hay.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Last Straw, Hay, Effort
“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
“Do not entrust your future to the limits of your stride.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Future, Limitations, Dreams
“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
“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'm so tired. Sleep's been stalking me for too long to remember.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Sleep, Tired, stalker
“I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived you can’t call your own.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Missing You, Love, Relationships
“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
“Focus makes calm minutes count.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May
Tagged: Focus, Time, productive
“Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Lime, Alcohol, Funny
“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.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Horror, creepy, monsters
“I must read.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Reading, Books, Bookworm
“Life's big. If you can't fix it, give it a spin.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, Only Revolutions: A Novel
Tagged: Life, Problems, Fixing
“Here then - the after math of meaning. A liftime finished between the space of two frames.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Time, Here, Then
“I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore.”
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Tagged: Wants, desires, Needs
“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