William Gaddis

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.

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.

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

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which ‘The Recognitions’ ’ debt to ‘Ulysses’ was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read ‘Ulysses.

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.

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.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.

None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.

No matter how hard the past is, we can always begin again.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay.

Ahh, that mountain of self-discovery. Every time you have reached the summit, the clouds clear and you see there is still a ways to go. Don’t look up with thoughts of despair; thinking how much further do I have to go?! Take a moment and look back to see how far you have come. Don’t lose sight of your accomplishments, and focus on the continued commitment to self-discovery and development.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.