William Gaddis

The function of this school is custodial. It’s here to keep these kids off the streets until the girls are big enough to get pregnant and the boys are old enough to go out and hold up a gas station.

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.

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

Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.

Reading Proust isn’t just reading a book, it’s an experience and you can’t reject an experience.

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.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.’ I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her… I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because recompense is a pleasure for them, but because obligation is a pain.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

An empire is an immense egotism.

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.