43 Quotes by David Markson

if one wishes to see a cat badly enough, one will doubtless see one.

The morning’s recollection of the emptiness of the day before. Its anticipation of the emptiness of the day to come.

Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.

I also believe I met William Gaddis once. He did not look Italian.

I still notice the burned house, mornings, when I walk along the beach. “Well, obviously I do not notice the house. What I notice is what remains of the house. One is still prone to think of a house as a house, however, even if there is not remarkably much left of it.

You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michaelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce – to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne – who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

One never does solve what it is about watching fires, really.