33 Quotes by Dennis Cooper

Why is it I feel a new nostalgia for the era of the guillotine?

So I thought, you know, Teach me about death, Satan, I don’t care. And it was all about murder, which was great because when you’re not the one getting murdered, murder’s the ultimate interesting thing. I totally agree with that.

I want to love someone so selflessly that he would never even think about going away. I suppose that’s what most people want. In fact, that’s probably why we don’t kill one another all the time. Everyone’s just a little too lonely to risk it.

Cult writer. It’s a weird term because it’s complimentary but condescending at the same time.

I think pornography is a very rich medium, and I’ve studied it closely and learned quite a lot as a writer from it.

Dan thought of love as defined by books, cobwebbed and hidden from view by the past. Too bad a love like that didn’t actually exist. In the twentieth century one had to fake it.

My novels tend to take a long time to become exactly what they’re going to be. They’re fluid messes until I’ve done a ton of editing and refining and rewriting. When I write novels, I always make related scrapbooks to help me organize and test my intentions.

Love: a hybrid emotion made up of various other emotions collaged by some weak individual’s mind to try to quell a particular horror that’s not been wiped out by more standardized symbols like Christ, etc. Nietzsche, right? Whatever.

Why do you think UFOs never land? Why don’t ghosts just say hello?