Quotes from Mason Cooley

Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.

Manly men and womanly women are still here but feeling nervous.

Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.

Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.

A blunt statement can be as false as any other.

Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.

Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.

Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.

If suffering brought wisdom, the dentist's office would be full of luminous ideas.

If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.

Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.

Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.

The wisdom of age: don't stop walking.

Some eras worship infancy; some, the aged. None as yet has adored middle age.

After ages of bombast, the rhetoric of virtue has become ironic and shy.

People who behave at forty as they did at twenty must sometimes wonder why their charm is not working.

With age, I have become both more pious and more shameless.

The noisy vacancy of youth, the quiet vacancy of age.

After sixty, the self-questioning of middle age is obsolete.

Growth provides novel experiences for youth; decay the same, alas, for age.

Living alone is good for privacy, bad for full-scale cooking and moving heavy furniture.

All anger feels like righteous anger; sorrow does not care whether it is righteous or not.