William Gaddis

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

There’s much more stupidity than there is malice in the world.

Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

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

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

We want someone to bring us the news.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.

It is a severe Rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many Allowances, and we make so few to our Neighbor: As if Charity had nothing to do with Religion; Or Love with Faith, that ought to work by it.

Men’s men: gentle or simple, they’re much of a muchness.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man’s own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain – at least in a poor country like Russia – and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

See, I think you live on earth a certain number of times until you finish what it is that you were meant to do here. And then you go on. I don’t think I’ll be back here. I think I’m done.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.