Edward Gorey Quotes

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

Edward Gorey

#2. My favorite journey is looking out the window.

Edward Gorey

#3. 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.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#5. Anyway, for whatever interest is to be derived therefrom. Bacon, Balthus, and Magritte are my three favourite painters, along with Dubuffet, of the whole post-impressionist period, by which I mean that before them Bonnard, Vuillard, & Seurat are my favourite painters of that time.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#7. If a story is only what it seems to be about, then somehow the author has failed.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#9. 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.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#11. There was a young woman named Fleager
Who was terribly, terribly eager
To be all the rage
On the tragedy stage,
Though her talents were pitifully meagre.

Edward Gorey

#12. 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.

Edward Gorey

#13. Where was I? in remarking that me is the envelopes and not nearly so much so, the often foolish letters inside.

Edward Gorey

#14. 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.

Edward Gorey

#15. I have given up considering happiness as relevant.

Edward Gorey

#16. Only art means anything.

Edward Gorey

#17. When people are finding meaning in things
beware.

Edward Gorey

#18. 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.

Edward Gorey

#19. 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.

Edward Gorey

#20. I suppose it was obvious that The Loathsome Couple was based on the Moors Murders, which disturbed me very greatly for some reason.

Edward Gorey

#21. 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.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#23. There was a young woman whose stammer
Was atrocious, and so was her grammar,
But they were not improved
When her husband was moved
To knock out her teeth with a hammer.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#25. 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.

Edward Gorey

#26. I tend to be rather inconsequential and trail off.

Edward Gorey

#27. Sir U fell down from a speeding train,
Which did some damage to his brain,
And after that he did not know
How to pronounce the letter O.

Edward Gorey

#28. He wrote it all down Zealously.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#30. The Baron told her that only art meant anything.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#32. 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.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#35. On November 18 of alternate years Mr Earbrass begins writing 'his new novel'. Weeks ago he chose its title at random from a list of them he keeps in a little green note-book. It being tea-time of the 17th, he is alarmed not to have thought of a plot to which The Unstrung Harp might apply.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#37. Such excess of passion
is quite out of fashion

Edward Gorey

#38. I thought it was going to be different;
It turned out to be(,) just the same.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#40. 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.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#45. Mr Earbrass escaped from Messrs Scuffle and Dustcough, who were most anxious to go into all the ramifications of a scheme for having his novels translated into Urdu, and went to call on a distant cousin.

Edward Gorey

#46. 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.

Edward Gorey

#47. When they answered the bell on that wild winter night. There was no one expected - and no one in sight.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#49. Books. Cats. Life is Good.

Edward Gorey

#50. let's take the time that has been given to us and find that clock.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#52. He presented it with a length of string
and passed on to the statue of Corrupted Endeavor
to await the arrival of Autumn.

Edward Gorey

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

Edward Gorey

#54. Each night Father fills me with dread
When he sits on the foot of my bed;
I'd not mind that he speaks
In gibbers and squeaks,
But for seventeen years he's been dead.

Edward Gorey