William Gaddis

If you want to make a million you don’t have to understand money, what you have to understand is people’s fears about money.

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

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.

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

We want someone to bring us the news.

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

Every man believes that he has greater possibilities.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

When a man is just and firm in his purpose, the citizens burning to approve a wrong or the frowning looks of a tyrant. Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind. Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic, nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove: Should the heavens crack and tumble down, as the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to carry it off.

Remember who you are.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.