Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes

I know how to be the witness to her grief. I don't know how to be this kind of villain.

I think for really good-hearted people, that idea of putting yourself in the shoes of a monster to figure out why they acted that way, that's a really frightening idea.

I ought to rejoice in the fact that our principal rival has died, but I don't.

I don't know if I would be a good cop. As gruff as I come off, I take things very emotionally.

Being an actor sometimes requires that you ask yourself questions you'd rather not know the answers to.

At the end of the day, people don't always remember what it is you said to them, but they remember how you made them feel.

Over the years, I just started paying a lot more attention not to whether I was right or wrong, but just to how I make people feel.

It doesn't matter if you're a Victoria's Secret model or you're someone's 90-year-old grandma or you're a little kid who's getting bullied or you're that kid's bully - everybody feels like there's something going on that's more correct than what is. We all have to reach out to one another in that fear, and we'd be surprised to hear, 'Me, too.'

I can find some part of me that relates to even the most evil characters. At least in my imagination.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

...a young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity.

Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

As long as the mind is in conflict-blaming, resisting, condemning-there can be no understanding. If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.

What does the brain matter compared with the heart?

It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.

It's not easy that everything you do, everybody has to come in and critique it and give their opinion. Sometimes it does help me and sometimes it hurts me as a person. That's life. I have feelings.

I feel guilty when people say I'm the greatest on the scene. What's good or bad doesn't matter to me; what does matter is feeling and not feeling. If only people would take more of a true view and think in terms of feelings. Your name doesn't mean a damn, it's your talents and feelings that matter. You've got to know much more than just the technicalities of notes; you've got to know what goes between the notes.

When you know that somebody lost their loved one as a result of a decision that I made, that's a tough moment. If you're a faithful person you try to empathize with the suffering that that person is going through.

Conscience, the organ of feeling which dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.

Ethan thought he was doing the right thing. He knew it was crazy. And he didn’t want to go, but he had to anyway. Ethan was like that. Even if he was dead. He saved the world, but he shattered mine. What now?

I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

I think the worst part is that when you know you dream another person's dream, you can never truly feel at peace. Never truly trust yourself. If you carry around somebody else's nightmare, who knows what else your insides might hide or when it might come out?

In the movie I realized, I had the luxury of getting to see how the other person feels.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women.