William Gaddis Quotes

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.

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.

Justice? You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

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

What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work?

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

We want someone to bring us the news.

Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

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