Quotes from Mark Z. Danielewski

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

Come morning I found the day as I have found every other day--without relief or explanation.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground.

...life's big. If you can't fix it, give it a spin.

No one ever really gets used to nightmares.

The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many.

The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours.

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.

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.

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

Explanation is not half as strong as experience but experience is not half as strong as experience and understanding

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.

Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign.

I must read. I must read. I must read.

It is hungry, it it immortal. Worse, it knows nothing of whim.

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.

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

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.