Quotessence
Home / Authors / William Gaddis
William Gaddis

William Gaddis Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldIfsPeopleWantArtistDregsGaddisI CanKnowsLaw

Famous William Gaddis Quotes

“Up the coast of the New World, the ship bearing ten million bananas ground out its course, every minute the waste heaving brokenly around it more brilliant as the moon rose off the starboard bow and moved into the sky with effortless guile , unashamed of the stigmata blemishing the face she showed from the frozen fogs of the Grand Banks to the jungles of Brazil where along the Rio Branco they knew her for a girl who loved her brother the sun; and the sun, suspicious, trapped her in her evil passion by drawing a blackened hand across her face, leaving the marks which betrayed her and betray her still.”

ColonialismGeography And Culture
Book:The Recognitions
Create 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 of political bigotry, mental obstinacy, financial security, sensual atrophy, emotional penury, and spiritual collapse which, under the name “maturity”, animated lives around him, it might be said that Reverend Gwyon had reached maturity.”

HumorMaturityGaddisRecognitions
Book:The Recognitions
Create image

“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.”

MeanLongSaidThousandRetreatTelephonesClingingDeliberationProvoked
Book:The Recognitions: A Novel
Create image

“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.”

WorldHeartHandsOne ThingTreeShareTragedyDareDrawingSurrenderAdvertisingDenialGod LoveBelongingRitualCurrencyRipeOrnamentsForgeryDead Trees
Book:The Recognitions: A Novel
Create image

“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".”

IfsMenLittlesSinResponsibilityTreeCreationReadyCapableUnderstoodDiedCommittedIndianCharmMissionaryConvincingPresumptionMissionary Work
Book:The Recognitions: A Novel
Create image