Writer Quotes by Mason Cooley

Writers tell more truths, and more lies, than most.

— Mason Cooley

Literature may be false, but it is not trivial.

— Mason Cooley

Rereading, we find a new book.

— Mason Cooley

Literature gives us a memory of lives we did not lead.

— Mason Cooley

Shaw writes as if it were always midday.

— Mason Cooley

Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.

— Mason Cooley

The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.

— Mason Cooley

Reading civilized the inner life.

— Mason Cooley

I am most drawn to writing when I have something else urgent to do.

— Mason Cooley

Anybody can lead a frivolous life. A frivolous writer, however, must have taste and intelligence.

— Mason Cooley

I read here and there in books, enjoying the examples and ignoring the argument.

— Mason Cooley

Every book teaches a lesson, even if the lesson is only that one has chosen the wrong book.

— Mason Cooley

Modern literature seduces with insults, riddles, and inside stories.

— Mason Cooley

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Modernism: the books are as hard to understand as life itself.

— Mason Cooley

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

— Mason Cooley

The more learned a writer, the more digression beckons him.

— Mason Cooley

Reading a great book causes jolts and frights.

— Mason Cooley

The privacy of reading frees us to entertain the alien.

— Mason Cooley

The writer considers sayability before anything else.

— Mason Cooley

While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.

— Mason Cooley

The writer is always courted by invitations from the all-too- familiar.

— Mason Cooley

Reading gives you some place to go when you have to stay where you are.

— Mason Cooley

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we must stay where we are.”

— Mason Cooley

I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.

— Mason Cooley

Let's have some good, old-fashioned literature, with a virgin and a moral.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Reading more than life teaches us to recognize ethos and pathos.

— Mason Cooley

Outside literature, high-flown sentiments are merely exasperating.

— Mason Cooley

Avid readers are enchanted by meaning, which is available chiefly in books.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism.

— Mason Cooley

“Reading gives us somewhere to go when we have to stay where we are.”

— Mason Cooley

Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.

— Mason Cooley

Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious.

— Mason Cooley

Writing about an idea frees me of it. Thinking about it is a circle of repetitions.

— Mason Cooley

Readers transform a library from a mausoleum into many theaters.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley