Mason Cooley Quotes

Sometimes the only way to become grounded is to hit bottom.

The realism of failure, the romance of success.

Realism: the wealth of detail guarantees the truth of the tale.

The real reality is always just around the corner.

Realism absorbs the ideal by adding a few small imperfections. Example: it paints a few specks of mud on the white gown of the Lady in the Garden.

The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

In even the happiest love story, the World wins at last.

I was once in love with books. Now they go their way and I go mine.

Unlike life, when books become meaningless, they are making a point.

To remain mysterious, say little and do nothing.

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

The unknowable creates the greatest controversies.

Stutters and snorts are meaningful but not usually referential.

Your words and my words are the same, but not our meaning.

Creativity is not a substitute for competence.

Only those in comfortable circumstances think love is the most important thing.

Love sorrows are addictive as other sorrows are not.

When love and adventure are finished, it's nice to have getting and spending to fall back on.

All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.

Loving, not the beloved, is the joy of love. The beloved, knowing this, most resolutely declines to be grateful.

Falling in love is the right adventure for those who dislike sports and travel.

Every lover's lament has an element of boasting.

In love, self-love is always at risk.

Only the most lucid can see their love as comedy.

In love as in art, good technique helps.

When my beloved arrives, I yawn. When my beloved departs, I weep.

Saying "I love you" makes a demand, but creates no obligations.

The madness of love can always be suspended--to cook dinner or catch a plane, for instance.

Lovers never want to say "I love you" at the same moment. Hence all the love stories.

Love Songs Now: Fewer broken hearts, more sexual misery.

I can neither return your love nor dismiss it.

Lovers always believe one another's sleight-of-hand tricks.

I love you in my dreams, but not in real life.

Politics inflame the passions in a way that few beloveds can match.

Passion impels our deeds; ideology supplies the explanations.

The pleasantest part of work is having done it.

I like what I do for a living. I also like NOT doing it--perhaps even more.

Nature often seems like an idea that has had its day.

Natural Man, in our current version, is a disgruntled adolescent.

Fruitless striving breeds less despair than inaction.

Money is a better tonic than Geritol.

Freedom is the moment between sleep and waking before selfhood and the world return.

When money disappears, we soon understand the power of absence.

Rereading, we find a new book

Was there little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?

Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay where we are

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are

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

Dogs often remind us of the human ail-too human. Cats never.

Great talkers are trying to fill the gap between themselves and others but only widen it.