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David Markson QUOTES

David Markson QUOTES

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

― David Markson

2 " 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

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

― David Markson , The Last Novel

4 " 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

5 " 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. "

― David Markson , Wittgenstein's Mistress

6 " 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

7 " 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

8 " The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. "

― David Markson , Wittgenstein's Mistress

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

― David Markson , Wittgenstein's Mistress

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

― David Markson , Wittgenstein's Mistress

11 " 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

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

― David Markson , Wittgenstein's Mistress

13 " 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

14 " 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

15 " 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

16 " Petrarch sometimes wrote letters to long-dead authors. He was also a dedicated hunter of classic manuscripts. Once, after discovering some previously unknown works of Cicero, he wrote Cicero the news. "

― David Markson , Reader’s Block

17 " Oedipus gouges out his eyes, Jocasta hangs herself, both guiltless; the play has come to a harmonious conclusion. Wrote Schiller. "

― David Markson

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

― David Markson

19 " ...Troy itself was disappointingly small. Like little more than your ordinary city block and a few stories in height, practically.
Although now that I remember, everything in William Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon was astonishingly tiny, too. As if only imaginary people had lived there then.
Or perhaps it is only the past itself, which is always smaller than one had believed. "

― David Markson , Wittgenstein's Mistress

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

― David Markson