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6f8f0df
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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8e557c1
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When people are finding meaning in things - beware.
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Edward Gorey |
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30d1395
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A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clara who wasted away. D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh. E is for Ernest who choked on a peach. F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech. G is for George smothered under a rug. H is for Hector done in by a thug. I is for Ida who drowned in a lake. J is for James who took lye by mistake. K is for Kate who was struck with an axe. L is for Leo who choked on ..
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Edward Gorey |
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d337fc6
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What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.
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Edward Gorey |
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8f7d510
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Interviewer: What is your greatest regret? Gorey: That I don't have one
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Edward Gorey |
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19b6c6c
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The Suicide, as she is falling, Illuminated by the moon,
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suicide
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Edward Gorey |
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d23b3ee
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If something doesn't creep into a drawing that you're not prepared for, you might as well not have drawn it.
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Edward Gorey |
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acc6f22
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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.
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smoking
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Edward Gorey |
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d594ccb
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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29d8053
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Some tiny creature, mad with wrath, is coming nearer on the path.
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Edward Gorey |
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9b09fb3
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Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.
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Edward Gorey |
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0c0c763
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I just got a rather nasty shock. In looking for something or other I came across the fact that one of my cats is about to be nine years old, and that another of them will shortly thereafter be eight; I have been labouring under the delusion they were about five and six. And yesterday I happened to notice in the mirror that while I have long since grown used to my beard being very grey indeed, I was not prepared to discover that my eyebrows ..
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reading
death
old-age
aging
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Edward Gorey |
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7b67c0e
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I don't know what it is I'm doing. But it's not that. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
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Edward Gorey |
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7e6c16f
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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.
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rain
sleet
snow
weather
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Edward Gorey |
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552a86a
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Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion
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Edward Gorey |
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a411c6c
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All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.
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Edward Gorey |
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01242d2
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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.
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present
past
iceland
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Edward Gorey |
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1d03e84
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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fad1de0
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Apropos of nothing at all except that it has been on my mind and I think I had better say it because it accounts for a good deal of my behaviour. There is a strong streak in me that wishes not to exist and really does not believe that I do, so that I tend to become unnerved when these curious ideas are proved to be not really true because someone (in this case you) has responded to something I have said or done just as if I were an actual p..
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Edward Gorey |
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ef0261c
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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 might apply.
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writing
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Edward Gorey |
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27f2f95
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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9897d19
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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860719b
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where was I? in remarking that me is the envelopes and not nearly so much so, the often foolish letters inside.
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letter-art
letter-writing
letters
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Edward Gorey |
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83c4aa5
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my least favorite actress of all time, Helena Bonham Carter. I find her lack of a neck very off-putting and especially her acting.
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Edward Gorey |
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c0e8508
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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cc72aae
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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, b..
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theory
art-theory
but-is-it-art
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Edward Gorey |
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8a204e1
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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7c9acba
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A lady both callous and brash Met a man with a vast black moustache; She cried, 'Shave it, O do! And I'll put it with glue On my hat as a sort of panache.
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Edward Gorey |
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6357caa
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I suppose it was obvious that The Loathsome Couple was based on the Moors Murders, which disturbed me very greatly for some reason.
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moors
moors-murders
myra-hindley
the-moors-murders
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Edward Gorey |
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645d456
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Mr Earbrass was virtually asleep when several lines of verse passed through his mind and left it hopelessly awake. Here was the perfect epigraph for TUH: A horrid ?monster has been [something] delay'd By your/their indiff'rence in the dank brown shade Below the garden... His mind's eye sees them quoted on the bottom third of a right-hand page in a (possibly) olive-bound book he read at least five years ago. When he does find them, it will b..
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reading
writing
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Edward Gorey |
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0ab6592
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He presented it with a length of string
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Edward Gorey |
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87e8d36
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The Baron told her that only art meant anything.
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Edward Gorey |
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53b651c
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Mr. Earbrass has rashly been skimming through the early chapters, which he had not looked at for months, and now sees for what it is. Dreadful, , DREADFUL. He must be mad to go on enduring the unexquisite agony of writing when it all turns out drivel. Mad. Why did n't he become a spy? How does one become one? He will burn the MS. Why is there no fire? Why are n't there the makings of one? How did he get in the unused room on the third fl..
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Edward Gorey |
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afbf90e
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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922e64b
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He wrote it all down Zealously.
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Edward Gorey |
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8cf9f56
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When they answered the bell on that wild winter night. There was no one expected - and no one in sight.
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Edward Gorey |
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f62d9f8
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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.
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kindness
speeding
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Edward Gorey |
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afa2f04
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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.
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Edward Gorey |
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4fab3b8
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We did I think talk about your feeling of it's fun to be square, and while I'll go along with the Borges-like ramifications, I don't think I was the one who thought it up. In the past my justification for my self-conscious oddness of appearance (by now I figure this is the way I look, and it would not only be more self-conscious but also uncomfortable to change) was that people would think their impression of oddity came simply from the way..
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Edward Gorey |
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0a2060d
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I thought it was going to be different; It turned out to be(,) just the same.
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Edward Gorey |
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388a232
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How elegant! how choice! how gay! To think one doesn't have to pay. There is sound of falling tears; It comes from nowhere to the ears. Some tiny creature, filled with wrath, Is coming nearer on the path.
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Edward Gorey |
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c2cb225
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I do remember with great pleasure, if not terribly clearly, a play by Richard Foreman with music by Stanley Silverman called Hotel For Criminals, which I saw in a sinisterly suitable mansion in the cultured wilds of western Massachusetts in the summer of 1974, and which could be described as based loosely on Fantomas.
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fantomas
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Edward Gorey |
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7dcce69
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The sky has grown completely black, It's time to think of turning back.
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Edward Gorey |
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78fc8be
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The light is fading from the day. The rest is darkness and dismay.
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mortality
depression
melancholia
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Edward Gorey |