Mason Cooley Quotes

Birth dates and bathroom scales tell more truth than I want to know.

Go ahead and voice your criticisms, but don't expect to be invited back.

Undecidability is a useful category even in dealing with restaurant menus.

As a child I was told by my parents that I was happy, but I did not believe them.

Later is always my first choice.

Learned researches lead to headaches, constipation, and befuddled quarreling.

Complainers detest each other.

As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay.

Healthy vanity sweeps through life. Sickly vanity lies in bed.

The real reality is always just around the corner.

A yawn is more disconcerting than a contradiction.

My aspiration now is to get by luck what I could not get by merit.

Winning means outlasting everyone else.

Advice is more agreeable in the mouth than in the ear.

Universal truths have become an embarrassment, but they won't quite go away.

Writing is a refuge from unhappiness, but has its own sorrows.

Machismo makes no provision for preparing lunch, doing the laundry, or minding the baby.

Wisdom knows when to return death's embrace.

Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.

Wealth makes the laws that poverty must obey.

Self-analysis always cheats.

Imagination awakens ambition, then causes it to lose its way.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.

Romantics consider common sense vulgar.

With decrepitude, longevity has overshot the mark.

The desire to perform impedes conversation.

Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

Tolerance is a placid contempt.

Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.

To avoid taking responsibility, I become unresponsive but hang on until the other person leaves me.

The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.

Failure makes us envious. Success makes us greedy.

Habit keeps my life going, with occasional pushes from desire.

No dignity without distance.

The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

Denial of one appetite sharpens the others.

In every death, a busy world comes to an end.

A work of art is an echo chamber which repeats what people say about it.

Somehow the body keeps life going despite the ravaging negations of the mind.

A goldfish is reason enough for living, if someone needs a reason.

If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.

An adolescent is both an impulsive child and a self-starting adult.

Alone, I am satisfied with myself. With others, I am beset by troubling comparisons.

I am often attracted to people with whom I could not hold a five minute conversation.

Funerals prove that someone is really gone.

Disappointment proves that expectations were mistaken.

Prudence does not make people happy; it merely deprives them of the excitement of being constantly in trouble.