William Gaddis

“I feel that the writer's job is to provoke the reader's imagination, to make him work.”

“Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.”

“Most people don't know what they want, but they're pretty sure they don't have it.”

“Art is what we have when language fails.”

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

“If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.”

“Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power.”

“You get the illusion of knowing people, but you don't. You know the things they want to show you.”

“The writer's business is to find the shape in unruly life and to serve her witness.”

“What I look for in a book is a richness of texture. I want a book that is all voice.”

“Originality is the discovery of how to be new in traditional forms.”

“The only thing that's true is the detail.”

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

“What's the point of a revolution without general copulation?”

“We are born into a world where alienation is the rule.”

“The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion...”