William Gaddis

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.

There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.

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.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

That’s what I can’t stand. I know I’ll bounce back, and that’s what I can’t stand.

When you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.

Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.