William Gaddis

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

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.

Let them look up in the sky then…! if they must be so blind, that cannot see the truth in broad daylight, but must have the whole world in darkness to see the conceit of the stars…

It is a naked city. Faith is not pampered, nor hope encouraged; there is no place to lay one’s exhaustion: but instead pinnacles skewer it undisguised against vacancy.

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.

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

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time; a tremendous whack.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

Look to make your course regular, that men may know beforehand what they may expect.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.

Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.