Mark Z. Danielewski
Anger is one way to respond to fear. I say one way because responses are categorically multiple.Collection: Anger
'House of Leaves' is certainly about the unsettling nature of fear - and it was my aim to address that - but it's also about recovering from fear.
At the heart of any terror is the fear of losing what we find meaningful.
I'm a big believer in big books, and that doesn't necessarily mean long books.
Write what you love. Love will hold you through the hard times and hold the world during the good times.
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.
I believe the structure of 'House of Leaves' is far more difficult to explain than it is to read. And while I'd like to lay claim to some extraordinary act of originality, truth is I'm only taking advantage of capabilities inherent in everyone.
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.
'Lord of the Rings' was a set of books in which the world had been conceived before the characters were placed within that context.
My interest is in how meaning is communicated via language, and I believe the shape, positioning, even the color of the language has an effect on meaning.
I'm not independently wealthy.
Literature is capable of being a subject that people want to catch up on or discuss, whether at a coffee shop or a watercooler. It can become an intrinsic part of their dialogue.
Have no fear, you will find your way. It's in your bones. It's in your soul.Collection: Soul
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.Collection: Life
Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.Collection: Acceptance
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 realCollection: Real
Keep true to the rare music in your heart, to the marvelous and unique form that is and shall always be nothing else but you. Keep to that and you can do no wrong, which I realize is easier said than done.Collection: Heart
You shall be my roots and I will be your shade, though the sun burns my leaves. You shall quench my thirst and I will feed you fruit, though time takes my seed. And when I'm lost and can tell nothing of this earth you will give me hope. And my voice you will always hear. And my hand you will always have. For I will shelter you. And I will comfort you. And even when we are nothing left, not even in death, I will remember you.Collection: Remember You
The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours.Collection: Rumination
Youth always tries to fill the void, an old man learns to live with it.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Art
We all create stories to protect ourselves.Collection: Stories
Stories heard but not recalled. Letters too. Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad inreparable way.Collection: Flying
Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground.Collection: Smile
Losing the possibility of something is the exact same thing as losing hope and without hope nothing can survive.Collection: Losing
My hands resemble some ancient tree: the roots that bind up the earth, the rock and the ceaselessly nibbling wordms.Collection: Rocks
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.Collection: Eye
Who has never killed an hour?Collection: Hours
...she still cannot resist looking out the window every couple of minutes. The sound of a passing truck causes her to glance away. Even if there is no sound, the weight of a hundred seconds always turns her head.Collection: Couple
This great blue world of ours is but a house of leaves, moments before the wind.Collection: Blue
And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.Collection: Echoes
Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one.Collection: Eye
Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both brothers learned to identify with absence. Consequently, even if something beneficial fortuitously entered their lives they immediately treated it as temporary. By the time they were teenagers they were already accustomed to a discontinuous lifestyle marked by constant threats of abandonment and the lack of any emotional stability. Unfortunately, "accustomed to" here is really synonymous with "damaged by.Collection: Brother
Little solace comes to those who grieve when thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind.Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Thinking
He [Zampano] probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic, but 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 angels of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.Collection: Believe
Back on shore everyone was pretty messed up, but the owner/captain was by far the worst off. He ended up drunk for a week, though the only thing he ever said was "So?" The boat's gone. "So?" Your mate's dead. "So?" Hey at least you're alive. "So?" An awful word but it does harden you. It hardened me.Collection: Drunk
No gunfire, famine, or flies. Just lots of toothpaste, gardening and people stuff.Collection: People
Through all the windows I only see infinity.Collection: Infinity
Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.Collection: Book
Tom gets by, Navidson succeeds. Tom just wants to be, Navidson must become. And yet despite such obvious differences, anyone who looks past Tom's wide grin and considers his eyes will find surprisingly deep pools of sorrow. Which is how we know they are brothers, because like Tom, Navidson's eyes share the same water.Collection: Brother
I'm all soils west when the Earth lets go. I'm a thousand Julys.Collection: Letting Go
I will walk heavy, and I will walk strange.Collection: Strange
Here then - the after math of meaning. A liftime finished between the space of two frames.Collection: Math
The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many.Collection: Letters
...life's big. If you can't fix it, give it a spin.Collection: Giving
...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.Collection: Mean
For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.Collection: Dark
Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach, if youve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that youve 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.Collection: Crush
Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.Collection: Space