Edward Gorey quotes:

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.

Books, Cats, Life is Good.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

On the way home I absently minded (you know what I mean) went through a stop sign in Hyannis so of course there was a police car to apprehend me. A soft answer turnethed away wrath, fortunately.

When people are finding meaning in things -- beware.

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.

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.

Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion

I have given up considering happiness as relevant.

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

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

I tend to be rather inconsequential and trail off.

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

My favorite journey is looking out the window.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.

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

Only art means anything.

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

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.