William Gaddis

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

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

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.

That’s what I can’t stand. I know I’ll bounce back, and that’s what I can’t stand.

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.

Let them look up in the sky then…! if they must be so blind, that cannot see the truth in broad daylight, but must have the whole world in darkness to see the conceit of the stars…

A man who has no office to go to – I don’t care who he is – is a trial of which you can have no conception.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.

A man’s library is a sort of harem.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

When many demons are struggling inside you, the one that you feed is the one that will become the strongest. You alone are responsible for what you feed.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the wayside as we walk; in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people…