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e67aded
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Justice? -You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.
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law
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William Gaddis |
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39125bb
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I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who , and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-..
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William Gaddis |
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2501b30
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If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.
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William Gaddis |
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1e834d9
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How ... how fragile situations are. But not tenuous. Delicate, but not flimsy, not indulgent. Delicate, that's why they keep breaking, they must break and you must get the pieces together and show it before it breaks again, or put them aside for a moment when something else breaks and turn to that, and all this keeps going on. That's why most writing now, if you read it they go on one two three four and tell you what happened like newspaper..
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William Gaddis |
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be3c3a0
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Merry Christmas! the man threatened.
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William Gaddis |
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712cfe7
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What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.
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William Gaddis |
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2dc6bc4
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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
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money
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William Gaddis |
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a84b846
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Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it's right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of...recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it...
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William Gaddis |
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52d0b6a
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How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible...
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William Gaddis |
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b4d4a68
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Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, 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 organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent pr..
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William Gaddis |
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e19d249
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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?
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William Gaddis |
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7e77f1d
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It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.
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William Gaddis |
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ae82cfc
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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!
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William Gaddis |
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5c27d56
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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.
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William Gaddis |
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ded1595
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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.
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William Gaddis |
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0e65eeb
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Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions."
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integrity
honesty
life
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William Gaddis |
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4ce9c74
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mementos of this world, in which the things worth being were so easily exchanged for the things worth having.
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William Gaddis |
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266e038
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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.
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William Gaddis |
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823a097
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That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand.
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William Gaddis |
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37169ad
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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 shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.
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William Gaddis |
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5c3ec14
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When he was left alone, when he had pulled out one stop after another (for the work required it), Stanley straightened himself on the seat, tightened the knot of the red necktie, and struck. The music soared around him, from the corner of his eye he caught the glitter of his wrist watch, and even as he read the music before him, and saw his thumb and last finger come down time after time with three black keys between them, wringing out four..
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William Gaddis |
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5b5ea64
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He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?
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William Gaddis |
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870efc9
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Reading Proust isn't just reading a book, it's an experience and you can't reject an experience.
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reading
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William Gaddis |
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aeec8a6
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That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that's become my enemy because that's what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything.
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William Gaddis |
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25ba464
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There's much more stupidity than there is malice in the world...
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William Gaddis |
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e798c76
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The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa....Leonardo had eye trouble....Art couldn't explain it....But now we're safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf...
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William Gaddis |
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bc8ad80
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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 organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos a..
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education
order
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William Gaddis |
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70c7b64
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I'll tell you why yes, because why people lie is, because when people stop lying you know they've stopped caring.
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William Gaddis |
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10097fc
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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 without an instant of sentimentality. With infinite pity, but refusing pity. It's a precision of suffering, he went on, abruptly working his hand in the air as though to shape it there, --the tremendous tension of violence all enclosed in a framewo..
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William Gaddis |
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56f7865
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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
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William Gaddis |
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1bec847
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Problem what happened he always woke up the same person went to bed the night before only way he knew it these God damned words going through his head, go to bed knew he'd wake up the same God damned person finally couldn't take it anymore, same God damned words waiting for him only thing to do get rid of the God damned container for the thing contained, God damned words come around next morning God damned container smashed on the sidewalk ..
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William Gaddis |
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3166204
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what is it you have, or don't have, that you sit there completely self-contained, that you can sit and know . . . and know exactly where your feet are? Yes, that's what makes cats incredible, because you know they're aware every instant of where their feet are, and they know how much they have to share with other cats, they don't try to . . . pretend . . .
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William Gaddis |
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dacab58
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It is a naked city. Faith is not pampered, nor hope encouraged; there is no place to lay one's exhaustion: but instead pinnacles skewer it undisguised against vacancy.
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William Gaddis |
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90857b2
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And there's this twelve thousand dollars item for books. -That supposed to be twelve hundred, the twelve thousand is for paper. towels. Besides there is already that bequest for the library. -Did it say books in so many words? No. It's just a bequest for the library. -Use it for pegboard. You need pegboard in a library. Books you don't know what you're getting into.
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William Gaddis |
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e43f56d
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I'm reviewing it, the stooped man said, and started to plod off. -You read it? -No, he said over his shoulder, -but I know the son of a bitch who wrote it.
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William Gaddis |
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acde515
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Here, my good man. Could you tell me whereabouts Horatio Street...good heavens. 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 a subtle adaptation of the Socratic method of questioning perfected in the local athenaeums which he attended until closing time, was not to be known; for the answe..
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William Gaddis |
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b9eef0f
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That after an hour's silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness... That's all, it took him an hour to work that out.
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William Gaddis |
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c062cbc
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Each generation was a rehearsal of the one before, so that that family gradually formed the repetitive pattern of a Greek fret, interrupted only once in two centuries by a nine-year-old boy who had taken a look at his prospects, tied a string around his neck with a brick to the other end, and jumped from a footbridge into two feet of water. Courage aside, he had that family's tenacity of purpose, and drowned, a break in the pattern quickly ..
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William Gaddis |
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9eaf4ee
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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.
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William Gaddis |
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a17a22f
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The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.
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William Gaddis |
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e7333db
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Get a black suit and just freeload, problem it's too God damned late now even to be any of the things I never wanted to be.
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William Gaddis |
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97e7411
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We live in Rome, he says, turning his face to the room again, -Caligula's Rome, with a new circus of vulgar bestialized suffering in the newspapers every morning. The masses, the fetid masses, he says, bringing all his weight to his feet.-How can they even suspect a self who can do more, when they live under absolutely no obligation. There are so few beautiful things in the world...
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William Gaddis |
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3189b31
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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...
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William Gaddis |
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1734891
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He took off his hat and shook it (having hurried home as though his own coronation were waiting), and moved now with the slow deliberation of lonely people who have time for every meager requirement of their lives.
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William Gaddis |