Michael Chabon Quotes

When a man wants a mystery, it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

It is a stupid goose that listens to the fox preach.

I've read a thousand private-eye novels.

I was reading Agatha Christie as a little boy.

It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.

For the task assigned them Men aren't smart enough or sly Any rogue can blind them With a clever lie.

I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.

When I was a kid, I loved reading Sherlock Holmes. Now, you don't think of him as a superhero, but he was so damn much smarter than anybody else.

If you don't allow for self-serving bias in the conduct of others, you are, again, a fool.

Now I will show myselfTo have more of the serpent than the dove;That is--more knave than fool.

There are a great many simpletons who know themselves to be so, and who make a very cunning use of their own simplicity.

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.

Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.

You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel bad.

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.

The dullness of certain people is sometimes a sufficient security against the attack of an artful man.

Francis Wheen takes a hugely enjoyable sweep through the tangled thickets of superstition and gullibility in which modern man likes to ramble. He takes particular delight in reminding us how easily fools are parted from their money and how many of them there are.

A liar is a man who does now know how to deceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools: he who knows how to make skilful use of the truth, and understands its eloquence, can alone pride himself in cleverness.

What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

[The General Staff] maintained three sets of casualty figures, one to fool the public, one to fool the Government and one to fool themselves.

Knaves starve not in the land of fools.

Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.