43 Quotes by David Markson

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover...or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

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

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

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.

Coincidences undeniably imply meaning.I am rereading Hart Crane.I notice the dateOn which he stepped off that boatWas 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 thenIs that the year, today,Is 1979.Afterward, Crane’s mother scrubbed floors.Eventually, I may or may notJump overboard.Are there questions?

Tolstoy's wife copied out the entire manuscript of War and Peace in longhand seven times.

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.

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.

Although what I have basically been doing about the rain is ignoring it, to tell the truth. How I do that is by walking in it. I did not fail to notice that those last two sentences must certainly look like a contradiction, by the way. Even if they are on such thing. One can very agreeably ignore a rain by walking in it. In fact it is when one allows a rain to prevent one from walking in it that one is failing to ignore it.