William Gaddis

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.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

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.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

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

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Security will produce danger.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely the most numerous.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

If you would have me weep, you must first of all feel grief yourself.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.