William Gaddis

We’ve had the goddam Ages of Faith, we’ve had the goddam Age of Reason. This is the Age of Publicity.

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.

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.

That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that’s become my enemy because that’s what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything.

Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.

As a kid, I was making a building with blocks in our playroom. I didn’t have enough. So I asked my younger brother Robert if I could borrow some of his. He said, ‘Okay, but you have to give them back when you’re done.’ I used all of my blocks, then all of his blocks, and when I was done I had a great building, which I then glued together. Robert never did get those blocks back.

I realized that kids everywhere go for the same stuff; and seeing as we’d done it in England, there’s no reason why we couldn’t do it in America too.

When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

We weren’t wealthy but we definitely weren’t poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd’s Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.

The idea of kids helping other kids is such a great way to introduce children to being involved in charitable causes and volunteer work, setting them on the path to doing good for others throughout their lives.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker’s family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

Back when we was in school in Mississippi, we had Little Black Sambo. That’s what you learned: Anytime something was not good, or anytime something was bad in some kinda way, it had to be called black. Like, you had Black Monday, Black Friday, black sheep… Of course, everything else, all the good stuff, is white. White Christmas and such.

Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.

I think every kid needs to get a taste of what it’s like to do that real hard work.

On the farm, I had chores. I had a calf. We had a herd of cattle in the pasture. We’d go and get me a calf at a cow auction with Amish people, which I would raise. I gave it a bottle every day, in this cute little coop, like a giant dog coop almost. I’ve always been a big animal person.

We’re all mad here.

Everything depends on upbringing.

When I was a little girl, I remember carrying my orange UNICEF carton with me as I went Trick-or-Treating.