William Gaddis

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.

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

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.

The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

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.

The eye is easily frightened.

I look up at the universe and ask, ‘What are you trying to teach me here?’ I know I won’t hear a reply, but asking the question, makes me begin looking for the answer.

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?… What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!