Born to Be Posthumous Quotes

“I wanted to have my own bookstore until I worked in one," [Edward Gorey] reflected in 1998. "Then I thought I'd be a librarian until I met some crazy ones.”
― Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“I tend to think life is pastiche: I'm not sure what it's a pastiche of - we haven't found out yet.”
― Edward Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“You never really choose anything. It's all presented to you, and then you have alternatives.”
― Edward Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“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, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“Of course, from an absurdist perspective, all deaths are a punch line: the good news is, you're born; the bad news is, you die. Life is a death sentence.”
― Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“... children, in Gorey stories, are an endangered species.”
― Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“His day-to-day life was fairly frivolous and lazy and laid-back. It was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a bunch of cats hanging on his shoulders and maybe reading a book at the same time or doing a crossword puzzle." - Ken Morton, Edward Gorey's first cousin once removed, on Gorey's daily routines.”
― Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“…the army, again demonstrating the discernment for which it is universally admired, put PFC Gorey’s record-breaking IQ to good use: he was dispatched to Dugway Proving Ground, an army base in the Great Salt Lake Desert, to sit out the rest of the war as a company clerk.”
― Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“With Gorey, never getting there is half the fun.”
― Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“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.”
― Edward Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

“Only now are art critics, scholars of children’s literature, historians of book-cover design and commercial illustration, and chroniclers of the gay experience in postwar America waking up to the fact that Gorey is a critically neglected genius. His consummately original vision--expressed in virtuosic illustrations and poetic texts but articulated with equal verve in book-jacket design, verse plays, puppet shows, and costumes and sets for ballets and Broadway productions--has earned him a place in the history of American art and letters.”
― Mark Dery , Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey