Quotes from Edward Gorey

The light is fading from the day. The rest is darkness and dismay.

Oh, you know, fantasy I've always found a word I really don't care for. Fantasy always strikes me as something that doesn't have any reality because it's completely irresponsible. Anything that is fantastic I don't think is really terribly interesting. What's the Coleridge distinction between imagination and - is it fantasy? I don't think that's the word. Anyway, you know, one is meaningful and one isn't.

I tell myself not to remember the past, not to hope or fear for the future, and not to think in the present, a comprehensive program that will undoubtedly have very little success.

I've decided that, as somebody's pointed out, the older you get, it's very difficult to tell how much younger anyone else is. I mean I can't really tell the difference now between people who are fifteen and people who are thirty-five.

On his childhood] You know, I would like to think that I was much more poetic and sensitive than anybody else, but I don't think it was true.

If I'm working very hard, which is very seldom, the last thing I want to do in order to relax is to be with people and babbling away and so forth. So I go to the movies or read a book or watch any of my thousands of tapes upstairs.

On his childhood] I'm sure mine was happier than I imagine in retrospect. I look back and think, Oh poetic me, but it simply was not true. I was out playing Kick-the-Can along with everyone else.

Q: What are your sexual preferences? A: Well, I'm neither one thing nor the other particularly. Q: Why not? A: I am fortunate in that I am apparently reasonably undersexed or something. I know people who lead really outrageous lives. I've never said that I was gay and I've never said that I wasn't. A lot of people would say that I wasn't because I never do anything about it. What I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else.

I always feel that other people's lives are filled with meaning. You look at them on the street and think how real their lives must be. Of course, you also know that isn't true.

What obsesses me more than anything in the world . . . is why some things happen and why other things don't. It doesn't seem to me there is any logic, any way of . . . you know . . .

I've got an apartment that consists of nothing but books; on the other hand, I don't collect. It's a mania to buy books. I can't go out without buying a book. But it would never occur to me to collect. I collect authors because obviously I want all their work, but this business of first editions and that whole thing doesn't strike me.

Oh, dear, there are so many things we're brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you... Why don't you travel? Why don't you get a master's degree in...something? Why don't you try doing this, that, or the other? Well, you're probably not doing it because it's not right. Why worry about it? God knows, there's enough to worry about without worrying about worrying about things.

every now and then I do think life is a crock, there's no getting around it. Basically, it's really just awful. I do think it's stupidity that makes the world go round. And if you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point.

I think there should be a little bit of uneasiness in everything, because I do think we're all really in a sense living on the edge. So much of life is inexplicable. . . . The things that happen to you are usually the things that you haven't thought of or that come absolutely out of nowhere. And all you can do is cope with them when they turn up.

I think if you have to think about anything very long, you've obviously done yourself an injury, as it were.

My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like.

Not everything in life can be interpreted metaphorically; that's because things fall out on the way.

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.

The helpful thought for which you look Is written somewhere in a book.

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.

My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like.

When people are finding meaning in things - beware.

I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.

There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.