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Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes

Mark Z. Danielewski is an American fiction author. Though his second novel, Only Revolutions , was nominated for the National Book Award, Danielewski is most widely known for his debut novel House of Leaves , which garnered a considerable cult following and won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. He has published one novella, The Fifty Year Sword, which until rereleased by Pantheon in the United States in 2012, remained relatively obscure due to only 2000 copies being published in the Netherlands . Although several shorter works have been published, notably "All the Lights of Midnight: Salbatore Nufro Orejón, 'The Physics of Eror' and Livia Bassil's 'Psychology of Physics'," "Parable no9: 'The Hopeless Animal and the End of Nature,'" "Clip 4," and "Parable no8: 'Z is for Zoo,'" they've almost all been completely ignored by critics . His latest project is The Familiar, an ambitious 27-volume serial novel whose first installment, The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May, was released on May 12, 2015. The Familiar, Volume 2: Into the Forest was released on October 27, 2015. The Familiar, Volume 3: Honeysuckle and Pain was released June 14, 2016. The Familiar, Volume 4: Hades was published on February 7, 2017.

Danielewski's work is characterized by an intricate, multi-layered typographical variation, or page layout. Sometimes known as visual writing, the typographical variation corresponds directly, at any given narratological point in time, to the physical space of the events in the fictional world as well as the physical space of the page and the reader. Early on, critics characterized his writing as being ergodic literature, but recently, Danielewski, who has commented on his disappointment with criticism's inability to properly confront his work, has more poignantly phrased for readers the concept behind his certain brand of writing:



"Signiconic = sign + icon. Rather than engage those textual faculties of the mind remediating the pictorial or those visual faculties remediating language, the signiconic simultaneously engages both in order to lessen the significance of both and therefore achieve a third perception no longer dependent on sign and image for remediating a world in which the mind plays no part."



Since the release of The Familiar, Volume 1, Danielewski has been doing small tours for the release of each volume and releasing merchandise related to House of Leaves and The Familiar on his website. He has also not been seen publicly without donning a cat shirt since at least 2010.

The Familiar, Volume 5: Redwood is set to be released October 31, 2017.

✵ 5. March 1965
Mark Z. Danielewski photo

Works

House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
Only Revolutions
Only Revolutions
Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
Only Revolutions
Only Revolutions
Mark Z. Danielewski
Mark Z. Danielewski: 47 quotes0 likes

Famous Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes

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

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

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

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Very
soon he
will vanish
completely in the wings
of his own
wordless
stanza.
[ ]

but
his
stanza
is not
completely
empty
[ * ]”

Mark Z. Danielewski

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes about light

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“We all create stories to protect ourselves.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“This is not for you.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

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

Mark Z. Danielewski

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

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“What miracle is this? This giant tree.
It stands ten thousand feet high
But doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands.
Its roots must hold the sky.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“… 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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“No one ever really gets used to nightmares.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“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”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Variant: 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.
Source: House of Leaves

“The ruminations are mine,

let

the world

be yours.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

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

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“I must read.
I must read.
I must read.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“I will walk heavy, and I will walk strange.”

Mark Z. Danielewski Only Revolutions

Source: Only Revolutions

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

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

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

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“One forgets
that one is one.
I must try
to
remember this.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

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

Mark Z. Danielewski Only Revolutions

Source: Only Revolutions

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“… the finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Here then - the after math of meaning. A liftime finished between the space of two frames.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“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.”

Mark Z. Danielewski

“Very
soon he
will vanish

completely in the wings

of his own
wordless
stanza”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“My dear girl, is it that you are so lonely that you had to create this?”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite destiny* - a moment commonly referred to as "the big bang" - approximately 1.3-2 x 10^10 years ago.

*Typo: "destiny" should read "density.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“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 angles of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“Maybe you saw her first? Caught a glimpse between the lines, between the letters, like a ghost in the mirror, a ghost in the wings?”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

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