William Gaddis

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.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…

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.

It is a naked city. Faith is not pampered, nor hope encouraged; there is no place to lay one’s exhaustion: but instead pinnacles skewer it undisguised against vacancy.

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? 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.

He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Those who trust us educate us.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.

With all the doubt, with every worry, with all the negativity that I mistook for honesty, it kept me blinded. Lying for so long, I fooled myself in believing it to be my reality. And living in that world, it was my reality. Like when the lights come on, or when the curtains are drawn back, the shock of the clarity, meant I had to adjust to the new world I was witnessing. An honest; good with the bad, world, that I can thrive and grow in.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.