Quotes from Mark Z. Danielewski

The paramedics said there was nothing unusual, just the way it goes, eighty some years and the inevitable kerplunk, the system goes down, lights blink out 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.

Okay, you can be my slave. My flying kick nicks his nose. A warning. Worse if I weren't succumbing to squeal. What a heel. I'm too multiple to feel. A fork ahead. I take both.

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.

You're writing like a freshman.' And he replied- I remember this very distinctly: 'We always look for doctors but sometimes we're lucky to find a frosh.

For some reason, I've been thinking more and more about my mother and the way her life failed her, humiliated her with impulses beyond her command, broke her with year after year of the same.

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.

Known some call is air am.

She said memories mean all, but they are all dead.

A creature without a voice. A voice without a name. As immortal as my life. Come here at long last to summon the wind.

Do you really think the munificence of the multiverse comes translatable for your little mind? Have you ever thought to consider all that you miss whenever you're shown what is suited to your seeing?

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.

Also remember, love inhabits more than just the heart and mind.

We did not just go to the stars. We became the stars.

How do we remember this emptiness so in fullness we won't forget?' Asked once, when emptiness was the worst. Why ever [would] he want to remember that?

get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there. p. 591

Sometimes how you talk is all you got. Even if your talk is wrong.

and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind

However, The haven-Slocum Theory also points out that this course is not without risk. An even greater number of people dwelling on The Navidson Record have shown an increase in obsessiveness, insomnia, and incoherence: Most of those who chose to abandon their interest soon recovered. A few, however, required counseling and in some instances medication and hospitalization. Three cases resulted in suicide.

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.

Navidson's troubles might not have created the house, but they did ultimately shape the way he faced it.

If we desire to live, we can only do so in the margins of that place.

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?

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.

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