Mason Cooley

Scholarship can find little to say about the obvious.

— Mason Cooley

Funerals prove that someone is really gone.

— Mason Cooley

The best propaganda omits rather than invents

— Mason Cooley

If everything had a label, we would live in a fully delineated but false world.

— Mason Cooley

Awakening in the morning returns us to life, and to awareness of death.

— Mason Cooley

The tranquility of my room partakes too much of Forest Lawn.

— Mason Cooley

I can imagine many things, but few clearly.

— Mason Cooley

I deplore my shortcomings, but plan to keep them.

— Mason Cooley

The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.

— Mason Cooley

I reject all evidence that my fabulous beloved is an ordinary person who worries, watches TV, and has bouts of indigestion.

— Mason Cooley

People often are unsure whether or not they are in love, but they generally know whether or not they are having sex.

— Mason Cooley

Street sign: Ho Hum Road & Easy Street In retirement, I look for days off from my days off.

— Mason Cooley

Forgetting and remembering are governed by laws, but we cannot find out what they are.

— Mason Cooley

When poets go off the boil, they sound like bumble bees; when critics do, they sound like sewing machines.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen: even less, the trouble I've successfully avoided.

— Mason Cooley

The Ordinary Life: the misery seems planned, the happiness accidental.

— Mason Cooley

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

— Mason Cooley

Self-inflicted misery smirks under its crown of thorns.

— Mason Cooley

Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.

— Mason Cooley

Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.

— Mason Cooley

Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.

— Mason Cooley

Everyone makes sexy sounds; relatively few, sexy sights.

— Mason Cooley

No one can remember himself as an unpleasant child.

— Mason Cooley

Warning: fortune cookies don't care what happens to you.

— Mason Cooley

Life is always rich, thought only occasionally so.

— Mason Cooley

In a strange city, I connect through food and fantasy.

— Mason Cooley

Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.

— Mason Cooley

Fame now wears the halo that once crowned holiness.

— Mason Cooley

Intuition is often mistaken, but not altogether.

— Mason Cooley

Those who refuse to play second fiddle may wind up playing no fiddle at all.

— Mason Cooley

Adversity can strengthen us if it does not go on too long.

— Mason Cooley

The lyric deals with love and sorrow, the aphorism with contradiction and deceit.

— Mason Cooley

When lying to someone, look him straight in the eye.

— Mason Cooley

English has borrowed from everywhere and now goes everywhere.

— Mason Cooley

Death promises nothing--not even oblivion.

— Mason Cooley

Nudity is the costume of lovers and corpses.

— Mason Cooley

The negative always wins at last, but I like it none the better for that.

— Mason Cooley

Most of us live in a world that has ceased to exist.

— Mason Cooley

I do not regret the folly of my youth, but the timidity.

— Mason Cooley