Mason Cooley Quotes

No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.

Children consider disliking their parents natural, but if the dislike is returned, they are outraged.

We make some changes. But mostly changes make us.

Deconstruction: peering suspiciously at the text, I wait for it to make a slip and betray itself.

Sexual boredom is ousting sexual deviance as the problem.

Pornography and cooking shows have created two new spectator sports.

People often are unsure whether or not they are in love, but they generally know whether or not they are having sex.

In describing someone's character, I reveal my own.

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.

If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.

A sheep who goes looking for a wolf is sure to find one.

When I go out, I hope to leave the worst of myself at home.

Outside literature, high-flown sentiments are merely exasperating.

Dirty old men, ignoring society, continue to follow nature.

Proverbial wisdom counsels against risk and change. But sitting ducks fare worst of all.

General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.

The more knowledge, the clearer what the doubts are.

Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.

By multiplying ironies, I evade commitments.

Austerity causes constipation; excess, diarrhea.

A quiet well-behaved boy is likely to be both frightened and ambitious.

Dancers dance through their pain I shrink from mine.

Reading civilized the inner life.

Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.

No matter how close thought sticks to the actual, it follows its own rules.

Avid readers are enchanted by meaning, which is available chiefly in books.

No need to be sentimental to mourn the loss of Paradise.

Living too long exacts a painful price.

The squabbles of philandering Zeus and shrewish Hera are the Greeks' comment on married life.

Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand.

My mentors grow old and foolish. I am afraid.

Age: I go slower as time goes faster.

The depressed fall back exhausted from every undertaking.

Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes.

To win hearts, smile kindly on people's weaknesses.

Thoughts can be revised. Deeds cannot.

Memory is imagination pinned down.

Frivolous sorrow is folly. Frivolous enjoyment is not.

Spontaneity comes after skill, not before.

Rules that are never violated cease to be recognized as Rules.

In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential.

The grand style is available now only in old poems, museums, and parodies.

Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.

The real secrets are not the ones I tell.

The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.

Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.

The rich feel full of merit.