David Markson > Quotes

“Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover...or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“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.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“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.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

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

“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.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“Once, I had a dream of fame.
Generally, even then, I was lonely.”
― David Markson , Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?”
― David Markson, Vanishing Point

“Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“On the other hand it is probably safe to assume that Rembrandt and Spinoza surely would have at least passed on the street, now and again.
Or even run into each other quite frequently, if only at some neighborhood shop or other.
And certainly they would have exchanged amenities as well, after a time.
Good morning, Rembrandt. Good morning to you, Spinoza.
I was extremely sorry to hear about your bankruptcy, Rembrandt. I was extremely sorry to hear about your excommunication, Spinoza.
Do have a good day, Rembrandt. Do have the same, Spinoza.
All of this would have been said in Dutch, incidentally.
I mention that simply because it is known that Rembrandt did not speak any other language except Dutch.
Even if Spinoza may have preferred Latin. Or Jewish.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“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?”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“Tolstoy's wife copied out the entire manuscript of War and Peace in longhand seven times.”
― David Markson, Reader’s Block

“He had a face roughly the shape and color of a clumsily peeled Idaho potato, and he had a jaw like the end of a cigarette carton. ”
― David Markson, Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat: The Harry Fannin Detective Novels

“In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“If forced to choose, Giacometti once said, he would rescue a cat from a burning building before a Rembrandt.”
― David Markson, serrote #10

“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.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?”
― David Markson, Reader’s Block

“Still, how I nearly felt. In the midst of all that looking.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“Coincidences undeniably imply meaning.

I am rereading Hart Crane.
I notice the date
On which he stepped off that boat
Was April 26.

Tomorrow is April 26.

The year of his suicide was 1932.
I was four.
I am now fifty-one.
One undeniable implication in this case then
Is that the year, today,
Is 1979.

Afterward, Crane’s mother scrubbed floors.
Eventually, I may or may not
Jump overboard.

Are there questions?”
― David Markson, Collected Poems

“How miraculous it was, noted Diogenes, that whenever one felt that sort of urge, one could readily masturbate. But conversely how disheartening that one could not simply rub one’s stomach when hungry.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“I like Mr. Dickens’ books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackeray’s daughters.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“I still notice the burned house, mornings, when I walk along the beach. "Well, obviously I do not notice the house. What I notice is what remains of the house. One is still prone to think of a house as a house, however, even if there is not remarkably much left of it.”
― David Markson

“Was it Brigid Brophy who gave up on a certain Virginia Woolf novel when she discovered that Woolf believed one needed a corkscrew to open a bottle of champagne?”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“Was it John Searle who called Jacques Derrida the sort of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name?”
― David Markson

“A simple creature unlettyrde. Julian of Norwich called herself.

The most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. Echoed Jane Austen—four hundred years afterward.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“Unquestionably it would have been Mary Magdalene who did the dishes at the Last Supper.

Concluded Marguerite Yourcenar.”
― David Markson, Reader’s Block

“Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm?

Which has never failed to remind me of the scene in which Odysseus does the identical thing, of course, so that he can listen to the Sirens singing but will stay put.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“Or was it possibly...nothing more than a read?”
― David Markson, This Is Not a Novel

“I also believe I met William Gaddis once. He did not look Italian.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress