Romeo and Juliet

 

Juliet was an idiot.

For starters she falls for the one guy she knows she can’t have, then she blames fate for her own bad decision. 

 love, like life, is about making choices. And fate has nothing to do with it. 

Everyone thinks it’s so romantic, Romeo and Juliet, true love, how sad. If Juliet was stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink the bottle of poison, and go to sleep in a mausoleum, she deserved whatever she got. 

Maybe Romeo and Juliet were fated to be together, but just for a while, and then their time passed. If they could have known that beforehand, maybe it all would have been okay.

for the most part, love is about choices. It's about putting down the poison and the dagger and making your own happy ending...most of the time. 

And that sometimes, despite all your best choices and all your best intentions... fate wins anyway.

Communication

 

Communication. It's the first thing we really learn in life.  Funny thing is, once we grow up, learn our words and really start talking the harder it becomes to know what to say. Or how to ask for what we really need. At the end of the day, there are some things you just can't help but talk about. Some things we just don't want to hear, and some things we say because we can't be silent any longer.  Some things are more than what you say, they're what you do. Some things you say because there's no other choice. Some things you keep to yourself.  And not too often, but every now and then, some things simply speak for themselves.

 

 whoever said "What you don't know can’t hurt you", was a complete and total moron. 

Because for most people I know, not knowing is the worst feeling in the world. 

 sometimes it's better to stay in the dark, because in the dark there may be fear, but there's also hope.

Pain

 

Pain comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain, the normal pains that we live with everyday. Then there's the kind of pain you can't ignore. A level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else; makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt. How we manage our pain is up to us. Pain. We anaesthetize, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it... and for some of us, the best way to manage pain is to just push through it. Pain, you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside.  Most of the time pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain, you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it, and life always makes more.

Denial

 

 We deny that we're tired, we deny that we're scared, we deny how badly we want to succeed.

 And most importantly, we deny that we're in denial. 

We only see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe, and it works. We lie to ourselves so much that after a while the lies start to seem like the truth.

We deny so much that we can't recognize the truth right in front of our faces. 

Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us in the ass.

 And when the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. 

The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. We are tired, we are scared, denying it doesn't change the truth. Sooner or later we have to put aside our denial and face the world. Head on, guns blazing.

 De Nile. It's not just a river in Egypt, it's a freakin' ocean

. So how do you keep from drowning in it?

 

You have an aunt who whenever she poured anything for you she would say "Say when!" 

 aunt would say "Say when!" and of course, we never did. 

We don't say when because there's something about the possibility, of more. More tequila, more love, more anything. 

More is better. 

There's something to be said about a glass half full. About knowing when to say when.

 I think it's a floating line. A barometer of need and desire. It's entirely up to the individual. And depends on what's being poured. Sometimes all we want is a taste. 

Other times there's no such thing as enough, the glass is bottomless. 

And all we want, is more.

Secrets

 

 One thing is certain, whatever it is we're trying to hide; we're never ready for that moment when the truth gets naked. 

That's the problem with secrets – like misery, they love company. 

They pile up and up until they take over everything, until you don't have room for anything else, until you're so full of secrets you feel like you're going to burst. 

The thing people forget is how good it can feel when you finally set secrets free. Whether good or bad, at least they're out in the open, like it or not. And once your secrets are out in the open, you don't have to hide behind them anymore. 

The problem with secrets is even when you think you're in control, you're not.

 

You know how when you were a kid and you believed in fairy tales? 

That fantasy of what your life would be – white dress, prince charming who’d carry you away to a castle on a hill. You’d lie in your bed at night and close your eyes and you had complete and utter faith. 

Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, prince charming –they were so close you could taste them. 

But eventually you grow up and one day you open your eyes and the fairy tale disappears. 

Most people turn to the things and people they can trust. 

But the thing is, it’s hard to let go of that fairy tale entirely because almost everyone has that smallest bit of hope and faith that one day they would open their eyes and it would all come true.

 At the end of the day, faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don't really expect it. Its like one day you realize that the fairy tale may be slightly different than you dreamed. The castle, well, it may not be a castle. 

And it's not so important that it's happy ever after. Just that it's happy right now.

 See once in a while, once in a blue moon, people will surprise you, 

and once in a while people may even take your breath away.

 

 if life's so hard already, why do we bring more trouble down on ourselves? 

What's up with the need to hit the self-destruct button? 

Maybe we like the pain. Maybe we're wired that way. Because without it, I don't know, maybe we just wouldn't feel real. 

What's that saying? Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer?

 Because it feels so good when I stop.

 

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. “Never leave that till tomorrow,” he said, “Which you can do today.” 

This is the man who discovered electricity. You’d think more of us would listen to what he had to say. 

I don’t know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you’re wrong? What if you make a mistake you can’t undo? 

Whatever it is we're afraid of, one thing holds true: that by the time the pain of not doing the thing gets worse than the fear of doing it, it can feel like we're carrying around a giant tumor. And you thought I was speaking metaphorically. 

The early bird catches the worm; 

a stitch in time saves nine. 

He who hesitates is lost. 

We can't pretend we haven't been told. 

We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to ‘seize the day'. 

Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. 

That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping. 

And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.

 

Remember when you were a kid and your biggest worry was, like, if you'd get a bike for your birthday or if you'd get to eat cookies for breakfast. 

Being an adult? Totally overrated. 

I mean seriously, don't be fooled by all the hot shoes and the great sex and the no parents anywhere telling you what to do. 

Adulthood is responsibility. Responsibility, it really does suck. Really, really sucks. Adults have to be places and do things and earn a living and pay the rent.

The scariest part about responsibility? When you screw up and let it slip right through your fingers. Responsibility. It really does suck. 

Unfortunately, once you get past the age of braces and training bras, responsibility doesn't go away. It can't be avoided. Either someone makes us face it or we suffer the consequences.

 And still adulthood has it perks. I mean the shoes, the sex, the no parents anywhere telling you what to do. 

That's, pretty damn good.

Intimacy

 

Intimacy is a four syllable word for "Here is my heart and soul, please grind them into hamburger, and enjoy." 

It's both desired, and feared. Difficult to live with, and impossible to live without. 

Intimacy also comes attached to life's three R's: relatives, romance, and roommates. 

There are some things you can't escape. And other things you just don't want to know.

 I wish there were a rulebook for intimacy. Some kind of guide to tell you when you've crossed the line. 

It would be nice if you could see it coming, and I don't know how you fit it on a map. You take it where you can get it, and keep it as long as you can. 

And as for rules, maybe there are none. 

Maybe the rules of intimacy are something you have to define for yourself.

It's all about lines.

 

It's all about lines.  

The line separating you from people

It doesn't help to get too familiar. To make friends. 

You need boundaries between you and the rest of the world. 

Other people are far too messy. 

It's all about lines. Drawing lines in the sand, and praying like hell no one crosses them. 

At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. 

So, you can waste your life, drawing lines, Or, you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines... that are way too dangerous to cross. 

But 

If you're willing to take the chance...the view from the other side is spectacular.

House Of Leaves

 

 

The book was followed by a companion piece called The Whalestoe Letters, a series of letters written to the character Johnny Truant by his mother while she was confined in a mental institution. 

Some (but not all) of the letters are included in the second edition.

 

House of Leaves was accompanied by a companion piece (or vice versa), a full-length album called Haunted recorded by Danielewski's sister, Anne Danielewski, known professionally as Poe. 

The two works cross-pollinated heavily over the course of their creations, each inspiring the other in various ways. Poe's statement on the connection between the two works is that they are parallax views of the same story. House of Leaves references Poe and her songs several times, not only limited to her album Haunted, but Hello as well. 

One example occurs when the character Karen Green is interviewing various academics on their interpretations of the short film "Exploration #4"; she consults a "Poet," but there is a space between the "Poe" and the "t," suggesting that Poe at one point commented on the book. It may also be a reference to Edgar Allan Poe.

The album Haunted also draws heavily from the novel, featuring tracks called "House of Leaves", "Exploration B" and "5&½ Minute Hallway", and many less obvious references. The video for "Hey Pretty" also features Mark Danielewski reading from House of Leaves (pp. 88–89), and in House of Leaves, the band Liberty Bell's lyrics were also songs on Poe's album.

 

Colors 

House of Leaves includes frequent and seemingly systematic color changes. While Danielewski leaves much of the interpretation of the choice of colors up to the reader, several distinct patterns emerge upon closer examination. 

Notable examples include:

• The word "house" is colored blue (gray for non-color editions of the book and light gray for red editions). In many places throughout the book, it is offset from the rest of the text in different directions at different times. Foreign-language equivalents of house, such as the German Haus and the French maison, are also blue. These colorizations even extend to text on the book's copyright page.
• In all colored editions, the word minotaur and all struckthrough passages are colored red.
• Many references to Johnny's mother are colored purple.

Font changes 

Throughout the book, various changes in font serve as a way for the reader to quickly determine which of its multiple narrators’ work they are currently following. In the book, there are four fonts used by the four narrators. These are: Times New Roman (Zampanò), Courier (Johnny), Bookman (The Editors), and Dante (Johnny's mother). (Additional font changes are used intermittently—Janson for film intertitles, Book Antiqua for a letter written by Navidson, and so on.)

 

The Navidson Record 

Will Navidson 

Will is the central character in The Navidson Record subplot of the novel.

A stint in the army early in his life leads him to a very successful career as a photographer, primarily in war-torn parts of the world; his role as an impartial documentarist of war affects him deeply. 

Later in his life, he moves to the eponymous house (located in the southeastern Virginia countryside), in an effort to find "[a] place to drink lemonade and watch the sun set", a place to "once and for all stay in and explore the quieter side of life" (page 9). 

However, the unnatural events that occur thereafter have a profound effect upon him and his relationship with his partner, Karen.

Karen Green 

Karen is Will's partner and a former fashion model. 

She suffers from claustrophobia, and throughout the novel refuses to enter the labyrinth within her house.

 She also seems to be extremely insecure regarding her relationship with Will; he is 'her rock,' though it is confirmed that she had at least three long-term affairs during the course of their relationship. Curiously, the events of the novel only seem to reduce her dependence on Will (as well as contributing to the eventual dissolution of their relationship). 

It is speculated that, during Karen's childhood, her stepfather once took Karen and her sister into a barn in their backyard, putting one sister in a well while he raped the other, and vice versa. This event is widely considered to be the cause of her claustrophobia. However, several footnotes and comments about the incident question this claim (another of many examples of the use of an unreliable narrator in the novel). 

In the aftermath of the events in the house, she becomes an unlikely editor, approaching many real characters (including Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Hunter S. Thompson, Douglas Hofstadter, Harold Bloom, and Jacques Derrida) for comment on The Navidson Record, albeit comment within the fictional universe of the novel. 

Eventually, she is reunited with Navidson after she conquers her claustrophobia and saves him from the abyss of the labyrinth.

Tom Navidson 

Tom is Will Navidson's somewhat estranged twin brother; 

Tom is a carpenter with substance addiction problems, who is markedly less successful than Will in his personal and professional life. 

After approximately 8 years of little contact, Will contacts Tom when he notices that his house is larger on the inside than the outside. 

A section of the novel, called "Tom's Story", is a partial transcript of documentary evidence and radio communication with the outside world during his vigil within the labyrinth, which he spends alone with his radio, waiting for Will. This section is referred to in the book as a "sometimes funny, sometimes bizarre history of thoughts passing away in the atrocity of that darkness" (page 252). 

He often refers to "Mr. Monster" and many of the jokes and anecdotes he provides are religious in nature. However, in a test of his true character, he bravely saves Will's children from being swallowed by the house before being swallowed himself.

Billy Reston 

Billy is an engineer and a friend of Will's, whom Will enlists early on in the story to help him try to find a rational explanation for the house's oddities. 

Billy uses a wheelchair, having been paralyzed from the waist down in a freak engineering accident in India; Will happened to be on the scene and took a photo of Billy moments before he became paralyzed. Billy came across the photo after his accident and kept it as a reminder that he was fortunate to have survived.

 Once the house's irregularities become more extreme, Billy joins Will and Tom in a thorough analysis; after Holloway and his men go missing, Billy insists on joining Will on the rescue mission, navigating the maze in his wheelchair. 

He eventually saves Will and Holloway's men from Holloway by engaging in a firefight with him, holding him back long enough for the house to "consume" Holloway. 

Billy survives the journey into the maze, but suffers persistent cold spells afterward as well as sustaining damage to his wheelchair.

Holloway Roberts 

Holloway is an experienced explorer whom Will contacts in an effort to properly explore the labyrinth beneath his house. 

Holloway is presented as the consummate outdoorsman: He has successfully engaged in numerous expeditions which would have killed normal men, and is an expert in all forms of survivalist equipment, from spelunking gear to firearms. 

He engages in two brief explorations of the labyrinth before deciding to take his men on a third, prolonged expedition, prior to which they load themselves up with enough food and water to last several days and enough provisions to—they believe—safely guide them back home. During the course of this exploration, Holloway reaches the bottom of the Great Staircase and becomes deranged due to finding nothing but more empty hallways. 

The house's bizarre architecture leads him to believe an image he sees down a hall is the "monster" stalking them when, in fact, he is actually looking at his own men; he shoots one of them, and, upon realizing what he has done, suffers a complete psychological breakdown and tries to murder them. Eventually, the house "traps" him by sealing him inside a series of locked chambers; alone and insane, Holloway records a series of unsettling final messages on a video camera before filming himself committing suicide. 

The tape of his death is recovered by Will from the labyrinth. The seconds leading up to the end of the tape reveal that either 1) Holloway's corpse is devoured by the "monster" he is convinced is real or 2) Holloway merely disappears into the blackness of the house.

When the House begins to attempt to harm the others late in the novel, Reston calls out Holloway's name. Whether Holloway had some influence on the house's actions (before or after his suicide) is left ambiguous.

Minor characters in The Navidson Record 

Kirby 'Wax' Hook: Another explorer of the labyrinth in Navidson's house. He is ultimately shot in the shoulder by Holloway, but he survives. The House leaves him with limited functionality in that shoulder, and an inexplicable case of impotence. However, after Navidson reenters the House for a fifth and final exploration, these symptoms disappear. Wax has a reputation as a flirt, who constantly attempts to hook up with women. He kisses Karen Green, a scene which Will later witnesses on camera.

Jed Leeder: The third explorer of the labyrinth in Navidson's house. He is shot by Holloway in the jaw, killing him.

Chad Navidson: Will Navidson and Karen Green's son, the older sibling. Around the times of the explorations, Chad is described as becoming increasingly aggressive and wandering.

Daisy Navidson: Will Navidson and Karen Green's daughter. During the explorations of the house, Daisy is described as suffering from echolalia.

 

Johnny's story 

Johnny Truant 

Johnny Truant serves a dual role, as primary editor of Zampanò's academic study of The Navidson Record and protagonist as revealed through footnotes and appendices.

In the beginning of the book, Truant appears to be a normal, reasonably attractive young man who happens upon a trunk full of notes left behind by the now deceased Zampanò. 

As Truant begins to do the editing, however, he begins to lose the tenuous grip he has on reality, and his life begins to erode around him. He stops bathing, rarely eats, stops going to work, and distances himself from essentially everyone, all in pursuit of organizing the book into a finished work that, he hopes, will finally bring him peace.

Initially intrigued by Zampanò's isolative tendencies and surreal sense of reality, Johnny unknowingly sets himself up as a victim to the daunting task that awaits him. As he begins to organize Zampanò's manuscripts, his personal footnotes detail the deterioration of his own life with analogous references to alienation and insanity: once a trespasser to Zampanò's mad realm, Truant seems to become more comfortable in the environment as the story unfolds. He even has hallucinations that parallel those of Zampanò and members of the house search team when he senses "...something inhuman..." behind him (page 26).

Zampanò 

Zampanò is the blind author of The Navidson Record. 

Approximately eighty years old at the time of his death, he is recognized by his neighbors as "eccentric" and "crazy." 

He was known to employ the services of volunteers (exclusively female) from local community centers to come to his apartment and read books to him. While little information is given explicitly about Zampanò's past, blindness, or personality, Johnny's introduction does state that Zampanò went blind sometime in the 1950s. Zampanò also suffers from graphomania.

Danielewski made Zampanò blind as a reference to blind authors Homer, John Milton and Jorge Luis Borges. 

Pelafina H. Lièvre 

Pelafina, more commonly referred to as simply "P.", is Johnny's institutionalized mother who appears in the appendix to the text. 

Her story is more fully developed in The Whalestoe Letters.

Minor characters in Johnny's story 

Lude: Johnny Truant's best friend, Lude is also the one that informs him of Zampanò's vacant apartment.

 Lude is a minor character, but some of his characteristics and actions are important in understanding Johnny. 

Lude assists Johnny many times in obtaining phone numbers of girls when they visit bars, clubs, and restaurants. Several times, Johnny mentions that he wishes he had not answered Lude's call late at night.

 Every time Johnny and Lude are together they seem to involve themselves in difficult situations. He is killed in a motorcycle accident near the end of the novel.

Thumper: A stripper who is a regular client of the tattoo parlour where Truant works. 

Although Johnny has encounters with many women, he remains fixated on Thumper throughout. Thumper's real name is eventually revealed to Johnny, but never to the reader.

 

The Whalestoe Letters

This story is included in an appendix near the end of the book, as well as in its own, self-contained book (with additional content included in the self-contained version). 

It consists of Johnny's mother's letters to him from a psychiatric hospital. 

The letters start off fairly normal but Pelafina quickly descends into paranoia and the letters become more and more incoherent. 

There are also secret messages in the letters which can be decoded by combining the first letters of consecutive words.

 

Johnny's story

An adjacent story line develops in Johnny's footnotes, detailing what is progressing in Johnny's life as he is assembling the narrative. 

It remains unclear if Johnny's obsession with the writings of Zampanò and subsequent delusions, paranoia, etc. are the result of drug use, insanity, or the effects of Zampanò's writing itself. 

Johnny recounts tales of his various sexual encounters, his lust for a tattooed dancer he calls Thumper, and his bar-hopping with Lude throughout various footnotes. The reader also slowly learns more about Johnny's childhood living with an abusive foster father, engaging in violent fights at school, and of the origin of Johnny's mysterious scars (page 505). 

More information about Johnny can be gleaned from the Whalestoe Letters, letters his mother Pelafina wrote from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institution. 

Though Pelafina's letters and Johnny's footnotes contain similar accounts of their past, their memories also differ greatly at times, due to both Pelafina's and Johnny's questionable mental states. Pelafina was placed in the mental institution after supposedly attempting to strangle Johnny, only to be stopped by her husband. She remained there after Johnny's father's death. 

Johnny claims that his mother meant him no harm and claimed to strangle him only to protect him from missing her. It is unclear, however, if Johnny's statements about the incident—or any of his other statements, for that matter—are factual.