Mason Cooley Quotes & Sayings

Only death rescues us from dying. — Mason Cooley

Cynicism has its own zealots. — Mason Cooley

Adrenalin dispels boredom. Run, you sufferers from ennui! Run for your lives! — Mason Cooley

The aphorism sometimes casts off cynicism and expresses strong feeling. — Mason Cooley

Beauty is lyrical. Ugliness is elegiac. — Mason Cooley

Love Songs Now: Fewer broken hearts, more sexual misery. — Mason Cooley

Nudity is the costume of lovers and corpses. — Mason Cooley

What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance. — Mason Cooley

Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals? — Mason Cooley

When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her. — Mason Cooley

Self-analysis always cheats. — Mason Cooley

Methodology is applied ideology. — Mason Cooley

To avoid tripping on the chain of the past, you have to pick it up and wind it about you. — Mason Cooley

Work at first rescues us, then ravages us. — Mason Cooley

I dream of vague shapes that hint of my heart's desire. — Mason Cooley

The Puritan sours his pleasures by disguising them as duties. — Mason Cooley

In retirement, only money and symptoms are consequential. — Mason Cooley

Inconsistency has been overpraised by people who do not expect to suffer from it. — Mason Cooley

Later is always my first choice. — Mason Cooley

Vanity is easily duped. Ambition, not. — Mason Cooley

Money comes to life as it is spent. — Mason Cooley

Anybody can lead a frivolous life. A frivolous writer, however, must have taste and intelligence. — Mason Cooley

The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning. — Mason Cooley

Wisdom has lost repute because it so often applies to a state of affairs that no longer exists. — Mason Cooley

Self-pity dries up our sympathy for others. — Mason Cooley

Constant talkers are unheard. — Mason Cooley

Experience is a great spoiler of pleasures. — Mason Cooley

Laughing at our friends, we avenge the disappointment they have caused. — Mason Cooley

Reclusive? The inner city will secure your privacy better than any desert cave. — Mason Cooley

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

Rule of criticism: only attend to the shape, and the purpose will manifest itself. — Mason Cooley

My mind is led astray by every faint rustle. — Mason Cooley

Complainers detest each other. — Mason Cooley

To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point. — Mason Cooley

Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle. — Mason Cooley

Self-realization is a comedown from salvation, but still gives us something to hope for. — Mason Cooley

Alzheimer's usually comes later than AIDS, but I decline to call that progress. — Mason Cooley

The critic roams through culture, looking for prey. — Mason Cooley

The soul is no longer honored as it once was, but it still keeps appetite from being the measure of all things. — Mason Cooley

Not romance but companionship makes the happiness of daily life. — Mason Cooley

I know that I am very much like everybody else, but not really. — Mason Cooley

Now that I see you understand me so well, I will avoid you. — Mason Cooley

The closeups of pornography make human genitals look like undiscovered prehistoric animals. — Mason Cooley

Until I am ready to lose weight, I cannot see how fat I am. — Mason Cooley

Lies save trouble now, but may return in thunder and lightning. — Mason Cooley

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief. — Mason Cooley

Writing about an idea frees me of it. Thinking about it is a circle of repetitions. — Mason Cooley

Alone, I am drunk on my thoughts; in company, I am sober again. — Mason Cooley

Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting. — Mason Cooley

Self-satisfaction and self-pity are both condemned. What are people permitted to feel about themselves? — Mason Cooley

Freedom is the moment between sleep and waking before selfhood and the world return. — Mason Cooley

Every work of art changes its predecessors. — Mason Cooley

Sexual attraction pairs people, but does not match them. — Mason Cooley

True wit has a grave intention. — Mason Cooley

In love as in art, good technique helps. — Mason Cooley

The ninety percent of human experience that does not fit into established narrative patterns falls into oblivion. — Mason Cooley

My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures. — Mason Cooley

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

Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes. — Mason Cooley

I feel that I have something significant to say, but I cannot think what it is. — Mason Cooley

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

Beauty and virtue: the most kissable ass in the world is no guarantee of good intentions. — Mason Cooley

Unlike life, when books become meaningless, they are making a point. — Mason Cooley

Good manners protect the privileged, but leave the unprivileged more vulnerable. — Mason Cooley

When sages commend excess, Desire is sick. — Mason Cooley

After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means. — Mason Cooley

Now defined as art, the totem has lost cult, taboo, and custom. — Mason Cooley

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent. — Mason Cooley

Necessity makes heroes of us all. — Mason Cooley

Sex is not imaginary, but it is not quite real either. — Mason Cooley

Everyone knows that (1) happiness is the goal of life, and (2) happiness is a chimera. — Mason Cooley

Money: power at its most liquid. — Mason Cooley

Always clamping down on excitement is not self-control but fear. — Mason Cooley

Realism: the wealth of detail guarantees the truth of the tale. — Mason Cooley

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

The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting. — Mason Cooley

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

After Voltaire: envy is chained to the portico of the temple of glory and can neither enter nor leave. — Mason Cooley

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

Lonely people console themselves with self-absorption or curiosity. — Mason Cooley

The Enlightenment needs more shadow; the Romantic Movement less. — Mason Cooley

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past. — Mason Cooley

If I want my time wasted, I'll waste it myself. — Mason Cooley

Literary tradition is full of lies about poverty-the jolly beggar, the poor but happy milkmaid, the wholesome diet of porridge, etc. — Mason Cooley

Listening to people keeps them entertained. — Mason Cooley

People are reluctant to cite boredom as grounds for divorce. — Mason Cooley

If I had found the words I was looking for, I would not have read so much. — Mason Cooley

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

Unlike the ambiguity of life, the ambiguity of language does reach a limit. — Mason Cooley

The language of pornography is abusive, that of romance adoring. Both are addressed to a fetish. — Mason Cooley

Inequality is a fact. Equality is a value. — Mason Cooley

The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me. — Mason Cooley

Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end. — Mason Cooley

After rejection - misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally, oh well, another try elsewhere. — Mason Cooley

I like the old wisdom
puns, riddles, spells, proverbs. — Mason Cooley

Reading civilized the inner life. — Mason Cooley

Curiosity makes loneliness. — Mason Cooley

Fruitless striving breeds less despair than inaction. — Mason Cooley

If I can't serve as a role model, let me serve as a warning. — Mason Cooley

A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats. — Mason Cooley