Mark Z. Danielewski Quotes

Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'.

I think they named the orange before the carrot.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.

Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

Typically, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and large, with oral language - when you watch a film or listen to a tape - you don't press pause.

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

To see is to think, and to think is to see.

Every reading is partial, but that does not absolve us from the quest for meaning, which defines us as a species.

Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.

Knowledge is first and wisdom is the manifestation of knowledge. To understand this tone and pattern of thinking in the numerical way automatically resonated with me.

A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

Truth has advocates who seek understanding," Richard said. "Corrupt ideas have miserable little fanatics who attempt to enforce their beliefs through intimidation and brutality... through faith. Savage force is faith's obedient servant. Violence on an apocalyptic scale can only be born of faith because reason, by its very nature, disarms senseless cruelty. Only faith thinks to justify it.

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

Unless you have read and absorbed the best that can be read and absorbed, you will not think clearly or well.

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Thinking is the desire to gain reality by means of ideas.