Mason Cooley Quotes

The Insignificance of Man is a congenial theme; my own insignificance is a sore point.

Every doctrine has a theory of the beginning.

If you should ever acknowledge my existence, I plan to snub you.

Eagerness to please attracts bullies and bores.

Successful innovations become conventions.

Confess to the misdeeds you cannot hide.

Even alone we go on justifying ourselves.

The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.

Looking backward at what has been lost, I feel sad, then indifferent, and at last relieved.

Many who take up burdens come to resent being put upon.

Inevitably, almost everything we say is either quotation or paraphrase.

A sympathetic look always makes me feel sorry for myself.

Something is sticking out its tongue at me from the corner of my mirror.

Hope, and hopelessness, persist despite the facts.

Faith of the bore: everything is worth saying.

Talent shuffles the deck. Genius brings a new deck.

The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.

Change often makes accepted customs into crimes.

Regret leads to overeating and naps.

One's fetishes are fascinating, but not because of their beauty or significance. The same could be said for one's genitals, or one's children.

A moment of eloquence enthralls us. An hour's worth leaves us stupefied.

The same old thing--even if it's champagne--is still the same old thing.

The wretchedness of failure is the great attraction of success.

Eccentricity gives misfits a way of fitting in.

Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.

Natural Man, in our current version, is a disgruntled adolescent.

Living alone is good for privacy, bad for full-scale cooking and moving heavy furniture.

New York is full of abandoned churches. A Godless city, but full of superstitions on every subject--art, money, sex, food, health.

Every few years something new breaks into the circle of my thoughts.

The self-righteous rule out the possibility that they are what has gone wrong.

Pedagogical romances leave the mentor disgruntled, the pupil confused.

A frog in love would not be enchanted to learn that her beloved had turned into Prince Charming.

As an elder I mistrust the wisdom of age.

The intimacy of love absolves us of our guilty separateness.

Boredom makes me sleepy or restless.

We may eat dinner together, but everyone puts the food in his own mouth.

Music dissolves the straight and narrow.

In new situations, I look carefully at appearances. In familiar ones, I glance.

The more learned a writer, the more digression beckons him.

Lack of reciprocity ruins friendships, but makes love affairs exciting for a time.

The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions.

The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.

Most people see no reason to stop arguing just because an issue has been decided.

A theology whose god is a metaphor is wasting its time.

Self-reform is the only kind that works.

Every book teaches a lesson, even if the lesson is only that one has chosen the wrong book.

Lovers always believe one another's sleight-of-hand tricks.

Stutters and snorts are meaningful but not usually referential.