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.

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

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

It is a naked city. Faith is not pampered, nor hope encouraged; there is no place to lay one’s exhaustion: but instead pinnacles skewer it undisguised against vacancy.

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…

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

Dare to think for yourself.

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.

A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

As Puppets are to Men, and Babies to Children, so is Man’s Workmanship to God’s: We are the Picture, he the Reality.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

When we direct our thoughts properly, we can control our emotions…

There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.