Top 49 Quotes & Sayings by Edward Gorey

I just kind of conjured them up out of my subconscious and put them in order of ascending peculiarity.

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.

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

I realize that homosexuality is a serious problem for anyone who is - but then, of course, heterosexuality is a serious problem for anyone who is, too. And being a man is a serious problem and being a woman is, too. Lots of things are problems.

Neither mine nor other people's prospects seem particularly pleasing just at the moment, and I have fantasies of going to Iceland, never to return. As it is, 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.

All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.... You can describe all the externals of a performance - everything, in fact, but what really constitutes its core. Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is what's left over after you've explained everything else.

Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion

If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children — oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either.

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.

I tend to be rather inconsequential and trail off.

Ideally, if anything [was] any good, it would be indescribable.

Only art means anything.

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am.

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

My favorite journey is looking out the window.

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

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

Vice is nice, but a little virtue won't hurt you.

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

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

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

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.

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

Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.

I should like a parsley sandwich. To the best of my knowledge they are not in season.

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.

If something doesn't creep into a drawing that you're not prepared for, you might as well not have drawn it.

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

When people are finding meaning in things -- beware.

The world may think it idiotic, Nor care at all we're symbiotic, But I will say at once and twice: I find it nice. I find it nice.

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

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

If I do not seem to be mentioning anything I’ve read lately, it is because I am in one of those periods of undifferentiated flux or something in which I am reading about fifty, at a minimum, books at once, so of course I seldom finish one. Eventually this phase will pass, and I’ll discover I have about ten pages to go in all of them, and will sit down and systematically finish them, one after another.

...my least favorite actress of all time, Helena Bonham Carter. I find her lack of a neck very off-putting and especially her acting.

God knows, there's enough to worry about without worrying about worrying about things.

This is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it’s irritating.

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

Mr Earbrass stands on the terrace at twilight. It is bleak; it is cold; and the virtue has gone out of everything. Words drift through his mind: anguish turnips conjunctions illness defeat string parties no parties urns desuetude disaffection claws loss Trebizond napkins shame stones distance fever Antipodes mush glaciers incoherence labels miasma amputation tides deceit mourning elsewards.

A small and sinister snow seems to be coming down relentlessly at present. The radio says it is eventually going to be sleet and rain, but I don't think so; I think it is just going to go on and on, coming down, until the whole world...etc. It has that look.

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

If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point.

I have given up considering happiness as relevant.

Books, Cats, Life is Good.

I feel that I am doing the minimum amount of damage to other possibilities that may take place in a reader's head.

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.

Having got into bed and turned out the light, I quietly burst into tears because I am not a good person. As they came and went for some minutes, I was concerned with the words following 'because' in the previous sentence, rewriting them over and over in my head until they seemed to be as close to the truth as it was possible for me to make them.

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.

I thought I'd be a librarian until I met some crazy ones.