Mark Z. Danielewski

“Write what you love. Love will hold you through the hard times and hold the world during the good times.”

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

“Your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay.”

“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.”

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

“You wouldn't believe how much harder it's getting for me to just leave my studio. It's really sad. In fact these days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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 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.”

“Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night.”

“But tomorrow came faster than expected, as if the future were never somewhere else, but all along part of the fabric of every present, merely untwining itself again and again into a new distinction that could never be new again.”

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

“Darkness is impossible to remember. Consequently cavers desire to return to those unseen depths where they have just been. It is an addiction. No one is ever satisfied. Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does.”

“'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.”

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