Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes

As a writer and director, I want to know what is behind the good manners and soft voice. Who is inside the silhouette?

You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you.

Meet me in Cognito, baby. In Cognito, we'll have nothing to hide.

I have a face I cannot show, I make the rules up as I go.

Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.

I didn’t tell him. He found out. Basically, he caught me coming in after the last time you and I saw each other. But he won’t give us away, Lucas. He’s even willing to help us see each other, as long as we help him with Charity.” “What, like, a fund-raiser or something?” I’d forgotten he didn’t know her name. “The vampire girl in Amherst.” “Wait—Charity? That’s her name? You were able to figure out who she is.” He smiled so proudly that all the tension of the moment instantly melted. “I fell in love with a genius.

There is a name hidden in the shadow of my soul, where I read it night and day and no other eye sees it.

Another secret we carry is that though drab outside - wreckage to the eye, mirrors a mortification - inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable.

I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.

He had never even glimpsed her.

Masks are what they seem to be; not so the faces beneath them.

You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you don't know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me.

I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.

-You forgot something important! -What? -It's under my sweater! -WHAT?! -Me!

Where there's smoke, there's bound to be mirrors.

But I still don't know what kind of monster was this god, until I saw that Jesus deliberately hid his light under a bushel. "Tell no one" was often his command.

We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us forever.

He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well.

It was any outcast's nightmare. If I looked carefully, I suspected I might find it beneath the black paint of the small acrylic by the window.

The real drama of life is never centerstage. It's always in the wings.

You couldn't see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.

I'd like to be invisible. To be anonymous and see things for what they really are. The truth may be painful but it's probably useful!

a woman with a secret may be a fascinating study, but she can never be a safe, nor even satisfactory, companion.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

An item that looks perfectly normal on the surface might only be disguised.