William Gaddis Quotes

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

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

William Gaddis

Has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organi...

Has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organi...

William Gaddis

Tags: education, order

About Author

William Thomas Gaddis Jr. (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) was an American novelist.
The first and longest of his five novels, The Recognitions, was named one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005
and two others, J R and A Frolic of His Own, won the annual U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
A collection of his essays was published posthumously as The Rush for Second Place (2002). The Letters of William Gaddis was published by Dalkey Archive Press in February 2013.
A MacArthur Fellow, Gaddis is widely considered one of the first and most important American postmodern writers.

William Gaddis Quotes

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

Has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organi...

About Author

The coincidences turn up down to the smallest details. There is, for instance, a character who has covered the mirrors with handkerchiefs. Apparently this happens somewhere in , too. And they said, Ah...

Nevertheless, they boarded The Purdue Victory and sailed out of Boston harbor, provided for against all inclemencies but these they were leaving behind, and those disasters of such scope and fortuitou...

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and...

No... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of...

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 in...

What do you mean do I go around with narcotics signing petitions painting slop writing books full of dirty words with a beard?

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...

That's what it is, this arrogance, in this flamenco music this same arrogance of suffering, listen. The strength of it's what's so overpowering, the self-sufficiency that's so delicate and tender with...

Then, what is sacrelige [sic]? If it is nothing more than a rebellion against dogma, it is eventually as meaningless as the dogma it defies, and they are both become hounds ranting in the high grass,...

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 him when he's done his work? What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human sham...

—I really prefer books. No matter how bad a book is, it's unique, but people are all so ordinary. —I think we really like books that make us hate ourselves.

Thus called upon, he took courage: the sursum corda of an extravagant belch straightened him upright, and he answered, — Whfffck? Whether this was an approach to discussion he had devised himself, or...

—What shall I do, in a Purgatory?... where they all speak spanish? I've never been in any kind of Purgatory before, and no one(...)

Resurrection a dispensable preoccupation for one who had not yet lived.

Let them look up in the sky then...! if they must be so blind, that cannot see the truth in broad daylight, but must have the whole world in darkness to see the conceit of the stars...

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible...

What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you become its prey

And that is why people read novels, to identify projections of their own unconscious. The hero has to be fearfully real, to convince them of their own reality, which they rather doubt. A novel without...