Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
24 quotes
"Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead."
"Irony? Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary."
"Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.Of course those who write short books have even less to say."
"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."
"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."
"Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful."
"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."
"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."
"Some people reflect lightSome deflect itYou by some miracleSeem to collect it"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"My dear girl, is it that you are so lonely that you had to create this?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night."
"And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence."
"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."
"Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing."
"The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many."
"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."
"Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign."
"Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila."