Mason Cooley Quotes

The modest youth somehow knows just what to do for the cameras.

The nudes of art are not so distant from pornography as prudish pedants pretend.

Finding a thought for an aphorism is not hard. Putting a kink in its tail is the hard part.

The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.

The mind scolds the heart, which makes excuses and goes its own way.

Paradox implies that stating a contradiction disposes of it.

Every perversion has survived many tests of its capabilities.

Boredom, not the will, is the mother of change. Necessity is the father.

Seek and Hide: the Lover gazes at the Beloved. The Beloved looks away. The Beloved turns and looks at the Lover. The Lover runs away.

The worship of Mammon may be vulgar or immoral, but it persists while other religions falter and disappear.

Promiscuity turns sex into a sport, like arm-wrestling.

My love grows wide and shallow in an effort to spread my losses.

My mother's mild-eyed sadness looks at me from the eyes of those I love.

Middle-aged adolescents are a libel on the real thing.

I can imagine many things, but few clearly.

The supposed unhappiness of the rich is always a cheerful topic of conversation.

All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.

Addicts turn their pleasures into vengeful Gods.

The aphorism offers a momentary sense of mastery over some confusion or unhappiness.

Boredom turns to panic if my beloved leaves before the usual time.

Liberal Doctrine: it is not children who misbehave, but parents.

Friendship is love minus sex and plus reason. Love is friendship plus sex minus reason

When my expectations are exactly fulfilled, I feel that something uncanny has happened.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

The avant-garde is now stranded in the past.

The public is a hibernating bear, hard to awaken and fond of honey.

Beggars beg to get money, not to reproach the passerby.

Great men wait for the right moment to abandon caution. The rest of us abandon it when impatience becomes too much for us.

Sophistication knows the score, but is powerless to change it.

Gossip is dying out because fewer and fewer people care to talk about anything besides themselves.

I like what I do for a living. I also like NOT doing it--perhaps even more.

Passion cooks. Reason cleans.

Comedy distances pain, but leaves signs of it everywhere.

Pursuit of the approximate can conclude. Not so pursuit of the absolute.

The chair as ideas fits only the bottom as idea.

Self-sacrifice usually contains an unspoken demand for payment.

If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.

Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.

The aphorist is a hit and run artist.

The noisy vacancy of youth, the quiet vacancy of age.

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.

Grandiosity lessens as work proceeds.

Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.

Innovation violates tradition--attacks it in public and steals from it in private.

Couples who come to understand one another often part.

Children would die of terror if they knew the folly and ignorance of their caretakers.

The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.

Rule of science: only exclude purpose, and Nature will reveal her causes.