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.

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

Mementos of this world, in which the things worth being were so easily exchanged for the things worth having.

If you want to make a million you don’t have to understand money, what you have to understand is people’s fears about money.

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Dont be content with things as they are. Dont take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.