Edward Gorey Quotes

Books, Cats, Life is Good.

There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.

It's well we cannot hear the screams we make in other people's dreams.

My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like.

If something doesn't creep into a drawing that you're not prepared for, you might as well not have drawn it.

The helpful thought for which you look Is written somewhere in a book.

When people are finding meaning in things -- beware.

Some tiny creature, mad with wrath, is coming nearer on the path.

My favorite journey is looking out the window.

God knows, there's enough to worry about without worrying about worrying about things.

I should like a parsley sandwich. To the best of my knowledge they are not in season.

I tend to be rather inconsequential and trail off.

More is happening out there than we are aware of. It is possibly due to some unknown direful circumstance.

I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.

I don't think anything might have been. What is, is.

I have given up considering happiness as relevant.

Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion

To take my work seriously would be the height of folly.

I thought I'd be a librarian until I met some crazy ones.

What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.

Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.

All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.

Ideally, if anything [was] any good, it would be indescribable.

The world may think it idiotic, Nor care at all we're symbiotic, But I will say at once and twice: I find it nice. I find it nice.

Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.

Vice is nice, but a little virtue won't hurt you.

Only art means anything.

Interviewer: What is your greatest regret? Gorey: That I don't have one

Not everything in life can be interpreted metaphorically; that's because things fall out on the way.

I don't know what it is I'm doing. But it's not that. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point.

The Suicide, as she is falling, Illuminated by the moon, Regrets her act, and finds appalling The thought she will be dead so soon.

I feel that I am doing the minimum amount of damage to other possibilities that may take place in a reader's head.

...my least favorite actress of all time, Helena Bonham Carter. I find her lack of a neck very off-putting and especially her acting.

I've never had any intentions about anything. That's why I am where I am today, which is neither here nor there, in a literal sense.

There was a young lady named Mae Who smoked without stopping all day; As pack followed pack, Her lungs first turned black, And eventually rotted away.

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am.

If a story is only what it seems to be about, then somehow the author has failed.

The Suicide, as she is falling, Illuminated by the moon, Regrets her act, and finds appallingThe thought she will be dead so soon.

The Baron told her that only art meant anything.

On the way home I absently minded (you know what I mean) went through a stop sign in Hyannis so of course there was a police car to apprehend me. A soft answer turnethed away wrath, fortunately.