William Gaddis

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

Merry Christmas! the man threatened.

What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you become its prey.

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

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

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.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by makebelieve.

Lying rides upon debt’s back.

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth… and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.