David Markson Quotes

Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.

In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano. What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.

What do any of us ever truly know?

You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover...or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

The morning’s recollection of the emptiness of the day before. Its anticipation of the emptiness of the day to come.

Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?

Is T.S. Eliot the only poet one can think of who could have spent a year on his own in Paris at twenty-three—and managed to have no sexual encounter whatsoever?

Once, I had a dream of fame. Generally, even then, I was lonely.

Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.

I also believe I met William Gaddis once. He did not look Italian.

You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michaelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.