Mason Cooley

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

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

Doubt is long winded. Certainty is brief.

Affection reproaches but does not denounce.

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

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

Every farewell combines loss and new freedom.

A quick smile is more seductive than a slinky dress.

A blocked path also offers guidance.

The body has a mind of its own.

Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.

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

Even a cow creates ambiguous signifiers. The moo of mystery.

Mind and body obstruct one another's pleasures.

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

Nostalgia keeps dissolving the ironic narratives in which I have contained my past.

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

Eternity eludes us even as a thought.

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

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

Jokes are unanswerable objections.

Nudity is the costume of lovers and corpses.

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

Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

A: What is the meaning of life? B: I know, but I won't tell you.

To learn a vocation, you also have to learn the frauds it practices and the promises it breaks.

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

At the dinner table if you cant think of anything to say sit quietly. Dont throw rolls or chew on your napkin.

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

Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past.

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

Money: power at its most liquid.

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

Never ask a bore a question.

Even cats grow lonely and anxious.

Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.

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

Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.

Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.

Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.

Writing is a refuge from unhappiness, but has its own sorrows.

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

In the theater of confusion knowing the location of the exits is what counts.

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

Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?

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

Lack of reciprocity ruins friendships, but makes love affairs exciting for a time.

Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.

If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.

Suspense combines curiosity with fear and pulls them up a rising slope.

The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.

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

Knowledge and power in the city peace and decency in the country.

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

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

Rereading, we find a new book.

The irrational may be attractive in the abstract, but not in cab drives, dinner guests, or elderly relatives.

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

The self-righteous rule out the possibility that they are what has gone wrong.

Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.

My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.

Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.

Death promises nothing-not even oblivion.

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

Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter.

Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.

Swindlers are notoriously gullible.

Secrets die when kept or revealed. They live by being faintly and uncertainly repeated.

Fears and lies intensify consciousness.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

Glamour looks eloquent but seldom talks.

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

The limitations of pleasure cannot be overcome by more pleasure.

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

Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge

Victorian sorrow: the stars are winking in the sky, but not for us.

The passion for money is never fickle.

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

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

Many think that assigning blame settles matters.

Astrology: do we make a hullabaloo among the stars, or do they make a hullabaloo down here?

A modest demeanor arouses thoughts of seduction.

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

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

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

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

Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.

Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does.

Oblivion waits without beckoning or threatening.

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

Few artists can afford artistic temperament.

When appearance and reality coincide, philosophy and literary criticism find themselves with nothing to say.

Prudence does not save us, but shows us pictures of our destroyers.

Orgasm: the genitals sneezing.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

If suffering brought wisdom, the dentist's office would be full of luminous ideas.

Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness.

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