Best 23 quotes of David Markson on MyQuotes

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

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

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

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

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, 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Although one curious thing that might sooner or later cross the woman's mind would be that she had paradoxically been practically as alone before all of this had happened as she was now, incidentally. Well, this being an autobiographical novel I can categorically verify that such a thing would sooner or later cross her mind, in fact. One manner of being alone simply being different from another manner of being alone, being all that she would finally decide that this came down to, as well. Which is to say that even when one's telephone still does function one can be as alone as when it does not.

An information bureau of the human condition, Theodor Adorno called Kafka.

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.

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?

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.

I like Mr. Dickens’ books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackeray’s daughters.

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.

Still, how I nearly felt. In the midst of all that looking.

Tolstoy's wife copied out the entire manuscript of War and Peace in longhand seven times.

Unquestionably it would have been Mary Magdalene who did the dishes at the Last Supper. Concluded Marguerite Yourcenar.

Was it John Searle who called Jacques Derrida the sort of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name?