Mason Cooley
Self-analysis always cheats.Collection: Self
I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.Collection: Betrayal
Which is the supplement? Fantasy or daily routine?Collection: Routine
Cruel impulses stir all about my kindly heart.Collection: Heart
Unlike other vices, cruelty, alas, is never boring.Collection: Vices
Victory brings obliviousness; defeat, attentiveness.Collection: Victory
I tried self-sacrifice a couple of times in my youth.Collection: Couple
The aphorism sometimes casts off cynicism and expresses strong feeling.Collection: Strong
Self-esteem is not based on itself.Collection: Self Esteem
Our detachments move us toward freedom and death.Collection: Moving
Commitments, not feelings, hold life together.Collection: Commitment
The pointless ferocities of intellectual life shock businessmen, who kill only to eat.Collection: Intellectual
Technique bridges among ideas, and sometimes generates them.Collection: Bridges
Rule of science: only exclude purpose, and Nature will reveal her causes.Collection: Science
The right time to die is never exactly now.Collection: Death
Death promises nothing--not even oblivion.Collection: Death
Only death rescues us from dying.Collection: Death
Death is hacking away at my address book and party lists.Collection: Friends
Death is just around the corner. If only it would stay there.Collection: Death
Death is always there, just beneath the surface.Collection: Death
The wretchedness of failure is the great attraction of success.Collection: Success
Failures are easier to repeat than successes.Collection: Success
Sometimes the only way to become grounded is to hit bottom.Collection: Reality
The realism of failure, the romance of success.Collection: Reality
Realism: the wealth of detail guarantees the truth of the tale.Collection: Reality
The real reality is always just around the corner.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Reality
The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.Collection: Real
In even the happiest love story, the World wins at last.Collection: Winning
I was once in love with books. Now they go their way and I go mine.Collection: Book
Unlike life, when books become meaningless, they are making a point.Collection: Book
To remain mysterious, say little and do nothing.Collection: Littles
Even a cow creates ambiguous signifiers. The moo of mystery.Collection: Cows
Explanations comfort us by giving the impression that there is an order in things.Collection: Order
The mind demands rules; the facts demand exceptions.Collection: Mind
Modern pictures banish depiction for interfering with the workings of paint.Collection: Modern
The beginning, middle, and end are parodied, reversed, and hidden by modernism, but not abandoned.Collection: Beginning Middle And End
Modern literature seduces with insults, riddles, and inside stories.Collection: Stories
Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.Collection: Disappointment
Warning: fortune cookies don't care what happens to you.Collection: Fortune Cookie
Hope, and hopelessness, persist despite the facts.Collection: Hope
Small faults and virtues are for daily life. The big ones are for emergencies.Collection: Character
Ideologies can survive hostility, but not indifference.Collection: Indifference
Comedy is hostile to profundity, and brings everything to the surface.Collection: Comedy
Giving out crowns to everyone will not make a nation of kings.Collection: Kings
Rereading, we find a new book.Collection: Book
Lawyers may reason powerfully, but power settles most issues.Collection: Power
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.Collection: Literature
Posterity--the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism--grows ever harder to conceive.Collection: Children