Edward Gorey Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Baron told her that only art meant anything.

The thing is, and here we come to E. Gorey's Great Simple Theory About Art (which he has never tried to communicate to anybody else until now, so prepare for Severe Bafflement), that on the surface they are so obviously those situations that it is very difficult to see that they really are about something else entirely. This is the theory, incidentally, that anything is art, and it's the way I tell, 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 have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it's irritating.