Mason Cooley

Imprudence gets us into more trouble than actual misdeeds do.

— Mason Cooley

A free spirit must be able to surmount anxiety time after time.

— Mason Cooley

Comedy distances pain, but leaves signs of it everywhere.

— Mason Cooley

Wisdom knows when to return death's embrace.

— Mason Cooley

Spontaneity comes after skill, not before.

— Mason Cooley

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

— Mason Cooley

Jealousy is inconsolable because it cannot know the beloved

— Mason Cooley

Advice is more agreeable in the mouth than in the ear. Mason Cooley

— Mason Cooley

My taking a seat on the Council of the Fathers caused a desperate fluttering among my ghosts.

— Mason Cooley

Fame is fickle, but Obscurity is usually faithful to the end.

— Mason Cooley

We worship the aesthetic, but we do not have faith in it.

— Mason Cooley

Boredom is the only sure cure for neurosis.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

An adolescent is both an impulsive child and a self-starting adult.

— Mason Cooley

Truth can remain silent. Lies must be spoken.

— Mason Cooley

I do not remember joy or sorrow in childhood, but listening for clues.

— Mason Cooley

Mild brown eyes beckon me to the past, but memory provides no clue.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Blackmail is one of the great pastimes of family life.

— Mason Cooley

Cynicism often draws correct conclusions, but nobody could live by its lights.

— Mason Cooley

Small faults and virtues are for daily life. The big ones are for emergencies.

— Mason Cooley

To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.

— Mason Cooley

Make the expectations lively enough, and action will follow.

— Mason Cooley

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

— Mason Cooley

If you are going to be rude, be quick about it.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Asceticism and celibacy can conceal many incapacities.

— Mason Cooley

In the museums, everything is in quotation marks.

— Mason Cooley

Innovation violates tradition--attacks it in public and steals from it in private.

— Mason Cooley

Contempt for others, like masturbation, is best as a secret pleasure.

— Mason Cooley

The eros of advertising is lurid but not specific.

— Mason Cooley

Diplomats lie with a heavy sense of destiny.

— Mason Cooley

When disaster waves, I try not to wave back.

— Mason Cooley

Even in the midst of love-making, writers are working on the description.

— Mason Cooley

Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

— Mason Cooley

Every seeming equality conceals a hierarchy.

— Mason Cooley

Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

I obey my own commands about as often as others do.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley