“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 is already that bequest for the library. -Did it say books in so many words? No. It's just a bequest for the library. -Use it for pegboard. You need pegboard in a library. Books you don't… — William Gaddis Copy Share
“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 damn the course of youth groping among the obstacles erected, dutifully, by its own hands earlier, along the way of that sublime delusion known as the pursuit of happiness. Not to be confused with the state… — William Gaddis Copy Share
“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
