William Gaddis

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

Mementos of this world, in which the things worth being were so easily exchanged for the things worth having.

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

There’s much more stupidity than there is malice in the world.

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

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.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

If you want the moon, do not hide from the night. If you want a rose, do not hide from the thorns. If you want love, do not hide from yourself.

Haven’t you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

The memory of a day like today reminds me to hold the ones I love that much tighter, that much longer… Take that much more time to be present and to feel the blessing of another day…

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.