Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
— Mason Cooley
For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.
The only peace is being out of earshot.
Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?
Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.
Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.
Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'
Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.
Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.
The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.
Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.
Good parties create a temporary youthfulness.
When I prayed for success, I forgot to ask for sound sleep and good digestion.
Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.
City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.
A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.
Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.
Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.
Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.
Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.
Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.
The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.
Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.
Cure for an obsession: get another one.
We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.
An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.
Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.
Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.
I love you is the inscription on Pandora's box.
At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.
Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.
Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.
Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.
I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.
Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.
Documents create a paper reality we call proof.
Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.
In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.
There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother's hatred still comes as a surprise.
