Mason Cooley

Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.

Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.

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

What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.

Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.

The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.

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

An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.

Documents create a paper reality we call proof.

Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.

We are more tied to our faults than to our virtues.

Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.

The beloved is the ultimate fetish.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.

Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?

Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.

There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.

Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.

Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.

Listening to people keeps them entertained.

A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places.

Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.

Never try to leap from a standstill.

Young men preen. Old men scheme.

My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.

Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.

‘Be faithful to your roots’ is the liberal version of ‘Stay in your ghetto.’

The wisdom of age: don’t stop walking.

Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.

Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.

Money: power at its most liquid.

The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.

In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.

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

The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.

Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.

Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.

Orgasm: the genitals sneezing.

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

Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.

The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.

In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.

While there’s life, there’s fear.

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

If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.

Few artists can afford artistic temperament.

Opportunity knocks, but doesn’t always answer to its name.

Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.

In every death, a busy world comes to an end.

Old and young disbelieve one another’s truths.

My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.

Other people’s beliefs may be myths, but not mine.

The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.

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

Critic’s delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.

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

After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.

Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

Mind and body obstruct one another’s pleasures.

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

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

Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.

Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.

Many gloat over their own troubles.

Self-reform is the only kind that works.

To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.

Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.

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

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people’s.

Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.

Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.

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

Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.

People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.

Don’t stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.

A blunt statement can be as false as any other.

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.

The body has a mind of its own.

The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.

Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path.

Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.

Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.

Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?

Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.

Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.

Art seduces, but does not exploit.

Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.

Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.

Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.

Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.

Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.

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

City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.

Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.

I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.

To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little.

Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.

Malice is always authentic and sincere.

Eternity eludes us, even as a thought.

Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.

While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.

Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness.

Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.

Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.

Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.

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

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

A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.

Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.

Even cats grow lonely and anxious.

The time I kill is killing me.

Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.

The real secrets are not the ones I tell.

Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.

Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.

Good parties create a temporary youthfulness.

Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.

Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.

An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.

Rereading, we find a new book.

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

To understand someone, find out how he spends his money.

Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.

Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.

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

If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.

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

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

The passion for money is never fickle.

Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.

A blocked path also offers guidance.

If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.

Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.

Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.

Fears and lies intensify consciousness.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

Women encourage men to be childish, then scold them.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.

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

The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.

In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.

Romantics consider common sense vulgar.

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.

Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.

In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.

I love you is the inscription on Pandora’s box.

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

Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother’s hatred still comes as a surprise.

Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.

If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.

I’m being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.

Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.

Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.

Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.

The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.

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

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

For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

Never ask a bore a question.

Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.

Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.

We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.

Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.

Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.

Hatred observes with more care than love does.

Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.

When I prayed for success, I forgot to ask for sound sleep and good digestion.

Even boredom has its crises.

Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.

When sages commend excess, Desire is sick.

Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity.

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

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?

Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.

I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.

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

Folly always knows the answer.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

Cure for an obsession: get another one.

Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.

The man in the street is always a stranger.

The only peace is being out of earshot.

Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does.

Sincerity: willingness to spend one’s own money.

The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.

Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.

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

Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.

Office politics are bloody-minded, but weak on content.

In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.