Thoughts of Sorts: Audacious Aphorisms *
Richard Kostelanetz
The first illusion generated by greater art is
someone’s superior imagination.
No frustration is greater for the writer than not being
able to express clearly the truth he knows.
Thought is free, though waiting to express your
thinking can be costly.
Serious people are funniest when they don’t intend to be.
No true artist lets imagination die in his dreams.
Older lovers have histories that they should keep to
themselves or, better, forget about.
Art schooling should teach that art has little to do
with common experience.
Certain suicides implicitly demonstrate the perils
incurred by living too long.
Genius discovers answers to questions that
haven’t been asked.
The goal is living longer while making life seem shorter.
Swans resemble sex objects who are both attractive and frightening.
Applying lipstick can make some men feel like women.
When everyone in a group is thinking alike, thought
has ceased to exist.
No one ambitious should begin an arts career
without first knowing about greater collegial competition
and the unfortunate fate of excellence.
Squeeze a truth to reveal more truths as
distractions of falsity disappear.
The most successful individuals become more than
they’d imagined they would be.
Whoever believes in reincarnation wills
everything to himself.
Seductive women get minks the same way that
female minks get minks.
People desire social power because they feel they
can’t survive without it.
Most gullible are individuals unaware that
they’re gullible.
Whenever you hear a government official declare
“we need to keep people safe,” beware of
an aspiring totalitarian.
Old age is simultaneously expected and surprising.
To squander time is to lose life.
Few are as unpopular with as many Americans
as a sitting President.
A house devoid of books lacks windows to the world.
A mirror looking at most of us naked can’t turn
away fast enough.
Arduous is what someone ardent does.
Whoever has wealth without working for it
resembles those few who never lack for love.
A prostitute would sooner be rented than owned.
The study of science resembles a narrative movie
whose ending was lost.
A recurring subject in film pornography is athletic intercourse
that’s easier to appreciate than to do.
One’s relatives are like a bath that’s okay at first
but later’s not so hot.
Whoever sits on a chair can’t see the space
between him and the seat.
For a man to profit from alimony laws, marry a rich
woman who will come to hate you.
A dead patient no doctor can invoice. Economics?
Whoever created human life must have had a sense
of humor as so much of living is a joke.
The most effective inspiration for a diet is dining
with naked fat people.
If automobiles worked only in reverse, wouldn’t
accidents be fewer?
More criminals are killed by other criminals than by
law officers, especially in poor communities.
At the funeral of a fellow mime, are mimes
permitted to talk?
Only a first world society honors excellent artists
who weren’t commercially successful.
Animals aren’t people, notwithstanding all efforts of
certain interest groups to portray even rodents
as anthropomorphic.
Whenever university students display a unanimous
opinion, suspect that their education has been deficient.
Money invested on plastic surgery usually succeeds;
on academic aptitude, not.
To accompany anyone “with problems” the first
challenge is whether you want to negotiate through
their problems.
People gullible about one dimension of experience
are usually gullible about others.
Whoever annotates a book is engaged in a one-
sided conversation with its author.
Whereas the standup comedian wants jokes that
make everyone laugh, the more literary comic writer
prefers humor that dummies miss.
People need explanations of what’s permanently
unknown, though none is intrinsically more
persuasive than any other.
Flattery succeeds initially, no matter how patently
disingenuous, in making the recipient feel he’s
worth flattering.
Uncertainty is both certain and uncertain.
As athletes, no less than speculators, are involved in
professions where performance can radically vary
from day to day, they inevitably become superstitious.
Greater is the lover who can make a partner laugh
with him or her in bed.
To keep your health, do not eat what you want, do
not drink what you like, and, in general,
do not do what your body wants most to do.
The principal political divide is not between left
and right or between progressives and conservatives but
between crazies who care and dunces who don’t.
A mind should be hosed down now and then, simply
to clean out crud that’s otherwise hard to reach.
When making missionary love, always look your
partner in the eyes to let him or her know that
you’re not thinking about someone else.
Only when the well goes dry does water become
invaluable.
The greatest disincentive to nuclear bombing is that
no sane conqueror wants to occupy useless
contaminated land.
Liberty encourages responsibility that autocrats
would like to usurp.
Remember that the sign saying “STOP” in large
letters is blank on its other side.
How can a dictator survive in a society riddled by
duplicity and distrust?
Whenever you see rain falling upwards, suspect
that you might be standing on your head.
So much that outsiders want to encapsulate, such
as gender or madness, really exists along a continuum.
Forgetting those you hate is easier than forgetting
about those whose love is no longer available.
The best listener understands not just what you are
saying but what you are trying to say.
A truly independent thinker offers ideas
that nobody wants to steal.
While a lawyer collects pay for his mistakes,
a doctor conveniently buries his.
A writer turning eighty develops an unseemly
interest in what earlier writers did after passing eighty.
The mark of a sophisticated sense of humor is
a taste for jokes that most people miss.
Music speaks in no language other than music.
Gossip you’ll like about someone you don’t.
Void is whatever undefined space is occupied
between this and that.
The sorrows that you want to drown eventually
learn to swim away.
Literary “nonsense” makes more sense than common nonsense.
Nothing’s more desired and yet limiting than sexual pleasure.
The medicinal effectiveness of a placebo demonstrates
that a strong mind can often correct errant matter.
A photo of a naked woman becomes more interesting only when the name of the body’s owner is revealed.
Laws that purport to reward virtue are more
capricious than those punishing vice.
Only after it had passed did I recognize the prime of my life.
Doubt the self-inflated person who spouts with
pretenses his or her discovery of attractive ideas
that you’ve already heard before.
Though skeptics can’t be wrong, they aren’t necessarily right.
Life has turned when more of the people most
important to us are gone.
Hate pits our little head against an antagonist’s larger body.
No humor is strong unless it is memorable, much
like the strongest work in other arts.
In periods of decadence, only the least decadent survive.
So self-limited is self-love that it easily turns into self-hatred.
A psychiatrist treating memory loss should ask to
get paid in advance.
People who miss irony can’t see beneath or around a surface.
Kindly try to remove your shoes before walking
through a mirror.
* In memory of Georges Perec (1936-1982)
Admiring Georges Perec’s title for a miscellany, I thought to collect my more audacious aphorisms that previously haven’t appeared in books.
—Richard Kostelanetz, FarEast BushWick, 14 May 2021
Richard Kostelanetz is online at RichardKostelanetz.com.