Mason Cooley Quotes

I am too impatient to wait for temptation to come to me.

Sleaze is a point by point refutation of elegance.

Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.

When I get the point, I often don't know what to do with it.

Diplomats lie with a heavy sense of destiny.

Old age likes indecency. It's a sign of life.

Retirement is a one-way trip to insignificance.

Even the most abject have a sense of superiority based on powerful though undefined merits.

Anxiety and lust are evicting the older passions.

If you are going to be rude, be quick about it.

Cynicism has its own zealots.

Work saves us from melancholy. Pleasure exposes us to it.

People who behave at forty as they did at twenty must sometimes wonder why their charm is not working.

Show enough regret, and your refusal will inspire gratitude.

Once I find the right maxim to apply, I feel that I have done all that can be expected of me.

Only the strong and the hopeful are able to revolt.

Some crave grief like strong drink.

The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.

Wallace Stevens: the Platonist celebrates endless change, but with regret.

Even a cow creates ambiguous signifiers. The moo of mystery.

The desire to create literature leads to frights, grunts, and coy looks.

I love you in my dreams, but not in real life.

Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.

Thrift is an attractive idea until you get down to specifics.

Sometimes "Yes" is rhetoric enough.

I gulp down my pleasures, chew over my miseries.

Talk about yourself as much as you like, but do not expect others to listen.

I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.

Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.

Attachments and bereavements are inseparable.

Methodology is applied ideology.

In conversation, everyone sits in confident judgment on the world.

Revenge is sweet but not nourishing.

Infallibility and invincible ignorance are the same thing.

Wit saves us from being swallowed whole by life.

Rule of art: let half-blind purpose lead you.

I tried good taste, but the strain was too much for me.

People who expect deference resent mere civility.

Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.

To be a social success, do not act pathetic, arrogant, or bored. Do not discuss your unhappy childhood, your visit to the dentist,the shortcomings of your cleaning woman, the state of your bowels, or your spouse's bad habits. You will be thought a paragon (or perhaps a monster) of good behavior.

The beginning, middle, and end are parodied, reversed, and hidden by modernism, but not abandoned.

Boredom strives to detach, but finds itself stuck.

Silence kills scandal.

The Enlightenment needs more shadow; the Romantic Movement less.

If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.

Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.

Fearful of sentimentality, I disown my tears and melting heart.

Cheerfulness is a policy; happiness is a talent.