Ascending Peculiarity

Some favorite (that is, congenial) quotes 

from Ascending Peculiarity: 

Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

But I haven't the slightest idea why my work has taken the tack it has. I just do what occurs to me--if it occurs to me strong enough.

I haven't done anything of my own that I didn't believe in. And I don't think the amount of work you have to put into anything has got anything to do with it.

Basically I've written what I've written because it's the only mode in which I can write or draw.

...I don't think it is possible not to be one's own generation; however, on the surface, my work harks back to the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Basically I am absolutely contemporary because there is no way not to be. I am dealing with contemporary concerns. You've got to be contemporary.

Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.

And the way I write, since I do leave out most of the connections, and very little is pinned down, I feel that I'm doing a minimum of damage to other possibilities that might arise in a reader's mind.

My better works just came to me, I think. I think if you have to think about anything very long, you've obviously done yourself an injury, as it were.