William Gaddis

He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

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.

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off.

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, the impression of inward comfort and Sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature’s English comfort.

It is natural to die as to be born.

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

Do what we can, summer will have its flies.

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.