MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI

'Lord of the Rings' was a set of books in which the world had been conceived before the characters were placed within that context.

Even the closest relationships that I have I know could potentially fall away. That's not to speak pessimistically or negatively about those relationships. In a weird way, it's the opposite. I value them.

Anger is one way to respond to fear. I say one way because responses are categorically multiple.

Literature is capable of being a subject that people want to catch up on or discuss, whether at a coffee shop or a watercooler. It can become an intrinsic part of their dialogue.

Write what you love. Love will hold you through the hard times and hold the world during the good times.

At the heart of any terror is the fear of losing what we find meaningful.

'House of Leaves' is certainly about the unsettling nature of fear - and it was my aim to address that - but it's also about recovering from fear.

At the breakfast table we are footnoting everything that we read. We don't recognise it as such but we encounter an article in the newspaper and then suddenly we recall that a friend had a certain comment on that particular story, a certain bit of news that we saw on the television applies to that and we immediately assemble an idea of a story.

I'm not independently wealthy.

My interest is in how meaning is communicated via language, and I believe the shape, positioning, even the color of the language has an effect on meaning.

I'm a big believer in big books, and that doesn't necessarily mean long books.

I believe the structure of 'House of Leaves' is far more difficult to explain than it is to read. And while I'd like to lay claim to some extraordinary act of originality, truth is I'm only taking advantage of capabilities inherent in everyone.

Little solace comes to those who grieve when thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind.

We all create stories to protect ourselves.

Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach, if youve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that youve got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into.

Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.

Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one.

Losing the possibility of something is the exact same thing as losing hope and without hope nothing can survive.

No gunfire, famine, or flies. Just lots of toothpaste, gardening and people stuff.

Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.

Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.

Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.

Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground.

Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite destiny* - a moment commonly referred to as "the big bang" - approximately 1.3-2 x 10^10 years ago. *Typo: "destiny" should read "density.

I'm all soils west when the Earth lets go. I'm a thousand Julys.