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Edward Gorey
7 quotes
“Ideally, if anything were any good, it would be indescribable.”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Lisa Solod, The Boston Globe; quoted in Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey, Little, Brown, 2018, p. 14.
“I think style chooses you... if I could choose, I would write like Jane Austen and I would draw like Rembrandt.”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cynthia Rose, "The Gorey Details," Harper's and Queen, November 1978.
“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.”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stephen Schiff, "Edward Gorey and the Tao of Nonsense," The New Yorker, November 9, 1992, p. 89.
“Of course I believe in graphology, also palmistry, the I Ching, the tarot, astrology, and all those other delicious things you can find in places like thesaurusi (can that be the plural? No, it can't, it must be thesauri), which turn out to mean prognostication by means of snail tracks or something.”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Peter Neumeyer, circa 1969; quoted in Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous, Little, Brown, 2018.
“I used to maintain that if it couldn't be put into words it didn't exist; if anything I believe rather the opposite now.”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Tom Fitzharris, circa 1974–1976; published in From Ted to Tom: The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey, 2025.
“Well, I'm neither one thing nor the other particularly. I suppose I'm gay. But I don't really identify with it much... I've never said I was gay, and I've never said I wasn't... What I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else.”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lisa Solod, "Edward Gorey: The Cape's master teller of macabre tales discusses death, decadence, and homosexuality," Boston magazine, September 1980; quoted in Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous, Little, Brown, 2018, p. 4…
“One scarcely knows to whom to complain.”
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cynthia Rose, "The Gorey Details," Harper's and Queen, November 1978.