Quotes from William Gaddis

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 pregnant and the boys are old enough to go out and hold up a gas station.

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 work that out.

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 in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.

He stood there unsteady in the cold, mumbling syllables which almost resolved into her name, as though he could recall, and summon back, a time before death entered the world, before accident, before magic, and before magic despaired, to become religion.

It rained; then it snowed, and the snow stayed on the paved ground for long enough to become evenly blacked with soot and smoke-fall, evenly but for islands of yellow left by uptown dogs. Then it rained again, and the whole creation was transformed into cold slop, which made walking adventuresome. Then it froze; and every corner presented opportunity for entertainment, the vastly amusing spectacle of well-dressed people suspended in the indecorous positions which precede skull fractures.

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 know what you're getting into.

He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.

None of us grew but the business.

In this world, God must serve the Devil.

Holy things and holy places, out of mind under the cauterizing brilliance of the summer son, reared up now as the winter sun struck from the south, casting shadows coldly upon the avenues where the people followed and went in, wearing winter hearts on their sleeves for the plucking.

Problem what happened he always woke up the same person went to bed the night before only way he knew it these God damned words going through his head, go to bed knew he'd wake up the same God damned person finally couldn't take it anymore, same God damned words waiting for him only thing to do get rid of the God damned container for the thing contained, God damned words come around next morning God damned container smashed on the sidewalk no place for them to . . .

the face of Christ in your van der Goes, no one could call that a lie.

The dirty Arab children sold peanuts from the top of the basket and hashish from the bottom. They spoke a masterful unintimidated French in guttural gasps, coming from a land where it was regarded neither as the most beautiful language, as in America, nor the only one, as in France.

The most difficult challenge to the ideal is its transformation into reality, and few ideals survive.

Money? in a voice that rustled.

He had, by now, the look of a man who was waiting for something which had happened long before.

Women get desperate, but they don't understand despair.

Even in sleep, he was waiting, a little tense like everyone waiting within reach of a telephone, for it to ring. And still, even in sleep, he knew there would be time. Adam, after all, lived for nine hundred thirty years.

You see I still have confidence in you sir, or should I say the artist who dwells within you, the artist who disdains such mundane details as selecting a fresh shirt in the morning, who steps forth into the workday world the rest of us inhabit indifferent to the glances he draws because his shoes fail to match, why? Because his mind has been elsewhere, his inner ear tuned to the sonorous tones of horn and kettledrum, tones it is his sacred duty to let us hear with him.

do you know why the French are so honest? because there are so few words in their language they're forced to be.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as rank presumption.

If we believe that love is weakness? And people resent it, because they think it's an admission of weakness, they draw away from it… and that's why you kill the thing you love, because it's your weakness personified. If you kill it, you will kill your weakness before it kills you.

Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people to protect themselves from talented people...

The lust of summer gone, the sun made its visits shorter and more uncertain, appearing to the city with that discomfited reserve that sense of duty of the lover who no longer loves.