Mason Cooley

Money: power at its most liquid.

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

Mind and body obstruct one another's pleasures.

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

Office politics are bloody-minded but weak on content.

Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.

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

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

When sages commend excess Desire is sick.

Moo may represent an idea but only the cow knows.

Old and young disbelieve one another's truths.

While there's life there's fear.

Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.

Eternity eludes us even as a thought.

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

Listening to people keeps them entertained.

Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?

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

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

Self-reform is the only kind that works.

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.

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

Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.

If modesty disappeared so would exhibitionism.

Procrastination makes easy things hard hard things harder.

To understand someone find out how he spends his money.

Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.

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

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

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

Ultimately blind faith is the only kind.

Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.

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

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

The real secrets are not the ones I tell.

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

Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.

A blunt statement can be as false as any other.

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

While we are reading we are all Don Quixote.

Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.

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

Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.

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

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

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

Never try to leap from a standstill.

Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.

Logic teaches rules for presentation not thinking.

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

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

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

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

Rage is exciting but leaves me confused and exhausted.

For many immaturity is an ideal not a defect.

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

Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.

Few artists can afford artistic temperament.

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

Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.

We are prepared for insults but compliments leave us baffled.

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

If the world would apologize I might consider a reconciliation.

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

The gods are watching but idly yawning.

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

Cure for an obsession: get another one.

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

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

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