Edward Gorey Quotes

“When people are finding meaning in things -- beware.”

“What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.”

“Books. Cats. Life is Good.”

“Interviewer: What is your greatest regret?
Gorey: That I don't have one”

“Such excess of passion
is quite out of fashion”

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

“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.”

“My favorite journey is looking out the window.”

“It's well we cannot hear the screams we make in other people's dreams.”

“The Suicide, as she is falling,
Illuminated by the moon,
Regrets her act, and finds appalling
The thought she will be dead so soon.”

“There was a young lady named Mae
Who smoked without stopping all day;
As pack followed pack,
Her lungs first turned black,
And eventually rotted away.”

“I tend to be rather inconsequential and trail off.”

“I've never had any intentions about anything. That's why I am where I am today, which is neither here nor there, in a literal sense.”

“Some tiny creature, mad with wrath, is coming nearer on the path.”

“Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.”

“I don't think anything might have been. What is, is.”

“I don't know what it is I'm doing. But it's not that. Despite all evidence to the contrary.”

“To take my work seriously would be the height of folly.”

“I have given up considering happiness as relevant.”

“More is happening out there than we are aware of.
It is possibly due to some unknown direful circumstance.”

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

“Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.”

“All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.”