Writer Quotes by William Gaddis

8 Writer quotes by William Gaddis

William Gaddis’s reflections on the writer’s role are brief but layered, echoing his complex, dialogue‑driven approach. These eight lines provide a quick, challenging glimpse into his belief that language can mirror societal chaos.

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“-And there's this twelve thousand dollars item for books. -That supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand is for paper. towels.…

William Gaddis

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“They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on…

William Gaddis

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“Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed…

William Gaddis

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There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

William Gaddis

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“—I really prefer books. No matter how bad a book is, it's unique, but people are all so ordinary. —I think we…

William Gaddis

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“The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.”

William Gaddis

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“How ... how fragile situations are. But not tenuous. Delicate, but not flimsy, not indulgent. Delicate, that's why they keep breaking, they…

William Gaddis

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How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

William Gaddis

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“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

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“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

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“-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…

William Gaddis

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“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

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“-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

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“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

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Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

William Gaddis

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“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

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“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

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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

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“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

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“What greater comfort does time afford, than the objects of terror re-encountered, and their fraudulence exposed in the flash of reason?”

William Gaddis

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“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…

William Gaddis

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“where would Christianity be today if Jesus had been given ten to twenty with time off for good behavior”

William Gaddis

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I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the…

William Gaddis

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