75 Quotes by William Gaddis

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

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.

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.

That’s what I can’t stand. I know I’ll bounce back, and that’s what I can’t stand.

None of us grew but the business.

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.

In this world, God must serve the Devil.

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.

I’ll tell you why yes, because why people lie is, because when people stop lying you know they’ve stopped caring.