House of Leaves Quotes

Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.

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

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.

You shall be my roots and I will be your shade, though the sun burns my leaves. You shall quench my thirst and I will feed you fruit, though time takes my seed. And when I'm lost and can tell nothing of this earth you will give me hope. And my voice you will always hear. And my hand you will always have. For I will shelter you. And I will comfort you. And even when we are nothing left, not even in death, I will remember you.

I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.

Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.

For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.

Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila.

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

Why did god create a dual universe? So he might say ‘Be not like me. I am alone.' And it might be heard.

I took my morning walk, I took my evening walk, I ate something, I thought about something, I wrote, I napped and dreamt something too, and with all that something, I still have nothing because so much of sum’thing has always been and always will be you. I miss you.

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

Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.

...and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along.

Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.

What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unmourned, well, you get the drift. As a counselor once told me -a counselor for Disaffected Yought, I might add: "You like that crap because it reminds you of you." Couldn't of said it better or put it more bluntly. Don't even disagree with it either.

And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.

No one ever really gets used to nightmares.

The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many.

The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours.

You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.

People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been just another word for darkness. Blind encounters writing sonnets no one can ever read. Desire and pain communicated in the vague language of sex. None of which made sense to me until much later when I realized everything I thought I'd retained of my encounters added up to so very little, hardly enduring, just shadows of love outlining nothing at all.

To read" actually comes from the Latin reri "to calculate, to think" which is not only the progenitor of "read" but of "reason" as well, both of which hail from the Greek arariskein "to fit." Aside from giving us "reason," arariskein also gives us an unlikely sibling, Latin arma meaning "weapons." It seems that "to fit" the world or to make sense of it requires either reason or arms.

I think that's what finally stopped me. I slid right to the edge. My legs were hanging over. And I could feel it too. I don't know how. There was no wind, no sound, no change of temperature. There was just this terrible emptiness reaching up for me.

Explanation is not half as strong as experience but experience is not half as strong as experience and understanding.

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

It is hungry, it it immortal. Worse, it knows nothing of whim.

Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign.

Do not wake me from this slumber, but be assured that just as I have wept much, I have also wandered many roads with my thoughts.

I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it’s drenched in sunlight and it’s weightless and I know it’s not cheap. It’s probably not even real.

One forgets that one is one. I must try to remember this.

I do not know anything about Art with a capital A. What I do know about is my art. Because it concerns me. I do not speak for others. So I do not speak for things which profess to speak for others. My art, however, speaks for me. It lights my way.

Come morning I found the day as I have found every other day--without relief or explanation.

Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful.

Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both brothers learned to identify with absence. Consequently, even if something beneficial fortuitously entered their lives they immediately treated it as temporary. By the time they were teenagers they were already accustomed to a discontinuous lifestyle marked by constant threats of abandonment and the lack of any emotional stability. Unfortunately, "accustomed to" here is really synonymous with "damaged by.

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.

Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only God’s echoes and God is Narcissus.

Here then - the after math of meaning. A lifetime finished between the space of two frames.

My dear girl, is it that you are so lonely that you had to create this?.

Darkness is impossible to remember. Consequently cavers desire to return to those unseen depths where they have just been. It is an addiction. No one is ever satisfied. Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does.

Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you?.

...the finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.

I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.

Your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay.

Very soon he will vanish completely in the wings of his own wordless stanza.

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.

Stories heard but not recalled. Letters too. Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad inreparable way.

What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unourned, well, you get the drift.

Tom gets by, Navidson succeeds. Tom just wants to be, Navidson must become. And yet despite such obvious differences, anyone who looks past Tom's wide grin and considers his eyes will find surprisingly deep pools of sorrow. Which is how we know they are brothers, because like Tom, Navidson's eyes share the same water.

You wouldn't believe how much harder it's getting for me to just leave my studio. It's really sad. In fact these days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate. And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only science.

Back on shore everyone was pretty messed up, but the owner/captain was by far the worst off. He ended up drunk for a week, though the only thing he ever said was "So?" The boat's gone. "So?" Your mate's dead. "So?" Hey at least you're alive. "So?" An awful word but it does harden you. It hardened me.

...she still cannot resist looking out the window every couple of minutes. The sound of a passing truck causes her to glance away. Even if there is no sound, the weight of a hundred seconds always turns her head.

i miss u i love you there's no second ive lived you can't call your own.

Stars to live by. Stars to steer by. Stars to die by.

Not all complex problems have easy solutions; so says science (so warns science.).

I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived you can’t call your own.

If not, let me offer you some instruction in at least one area: get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there.

I could see her get all nervous but she was also excited. Nightmares have that quality, don't they?.

I live at the end of some interminable corridor which the lucky damned can call hell but which the much unluckier atheists - and your mother heads up that bunch- must simply get used to calling home.

Even the brightest magnesium flare can do little against such dark except blind the eyes of the one holding it. Thus one craves what by seeing one has in fact not seen.

all I have to do is extend my hand but I can't run that far.

There is no such thing as the last straw. There is only hay.

Unoccupied space will never cease to change simply because nothing forbids it to do so.

for as leaves are to limbs, so are your words to your soul.

This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center.

One glance at her, even now in the glass of my mind, and I want to take off and travel with her.

Of course curiosity killed the cat, and even if satisfaction supposedly brought it back, there's still that little problem with the man on the radio telling me more and more about some useless information.