Top 120 Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “Have no fear, you will find your way. It’s in your bones. It’s in your soul.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

5. “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

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

8. “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.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

9. “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

10. “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

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

12. “This great blue world of ours is but a house of leaves, moments before the wind.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

13. “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

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

15. “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

16. “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

17. “Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing’. Of course, not knowing hardly prevents the approaching chaos.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

18. “Through all the windows I only see infinity.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

19. “The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

20. “Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

21. “Youth always tries to fill the void, an old man learns to live with it.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

22. “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

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

24. “This is not for you.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

25. “Heart may still be the fire in hearth but I’m suddenly too cold to continue, and besides, there’s no hearth here anyway and it’s the end of June. Thursday. Almost noon. And all the buttons on my corduroy coat are gone. I don’t know why. I’m sorry Hailey. I don’t know what to do.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

26. “I’m all soils west when the Earth lets go. I’m a thousand Julys.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

28. “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

29. “No one ever really gets used to nightmares.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

30. “Please forgive me for thinking faith means certainty.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

31. “I could see her get all nervous but she was also excited. Nightmares have that quality, don’t they?”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

32. “Do not entrust your future to the limits of your stride.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

33. “At the heart of any terror is the fear of losing what we find meaningful.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

34. “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

35. “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

36. “I took my morning walk, I took my evening walk, I ate something, I thought about something, I wrote, I napped and dreamt something too, and with all that something, I still have nothing because so much of sum’thing has always been and always will be you.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

39. “Irony? Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

40. “No better book ends than two walls.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

41. “We all create stories to protect ourselves.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

43. “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

44. “There is no such thing as the last straw. There is only hay.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski

47. “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? If we can’t embrace uncertainty do we miss the point of love?”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

48. “Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

49. “Unoccupied space will never cease to change simply because nothing forbids it to do so.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski

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

— Mark Z. Danielewski