“Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“Each generation was a rehearsal of the one before, so that that family gradually formed the repetitive pattern of a Greek fret, interrupted only once in two centuries by a nine-year-old boy who had taken a look at his prospects,… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“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… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“What is it they want from a man that they didn't get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“-We live in Rome, he says, turning his face to the room again, -Caligula's Rome, with a new circus of vulgar bestialized suffering in the newspapers every morning. The masses, the fetid masses, he says, bringing all his weight to his feet.-How can they even suspect a self who can do more, when they live under absolutely no obligation. There… — William Gaddis Copy Share
“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… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“-And there's this twelve thousand dollars item for books. -That supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand is for paper. towels. Besides there… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“Venerable age had not, for him, arranged that derelict landscape against which it is privileged to sit and pick its nose, break wind, and… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
We're comic. We're all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are. — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress… — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
“What greater comfort does time afford, than the objects of terror re-encountered, and their fraudulence exposed in the flash of reason?” — William Gaddis Copy Share Image
