William Gaddis

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which ‘The Recognitions’ ’ debt to ‘Ulysses’ was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read ‘Ulysses.

He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

The remedy is worse than the disease.

One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature – if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you – know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

I am stronger than my fear.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

You must avoid sloth, that wicked siren.

Burning logs can carry on quite a conversation! … Have you ever heard apple wood talking? It’s the most loquacious of all. You really can’t get a word in edgeways.