#99

“The minute you get your hands on something the power to keep something like that going you couldn't do it you couldn't even leave it alone for a few people still looking for something beautiful, people who'd rather hear a symphony than eat who can still, who hear a magnificent soprano voice singing ach nein when you hear this here lady singing up mine you can't get up to their level so you drag them down to yours if there's any way to ruin something, to degrade it to cheapen it...” (id, 659).

#98

“Player piano plays by itself get to shoot the pianist just read it Gid damn it says it right here, here where invention was eliminating the very possibility of failure as a condition for success precisely in the God damn arts there” (id, 604).

#97

“– Like I mean what's that.
– What.
– Like that arrow you made.
– What this? It's a diminuendo don't you, you read music don't you?
Plunk – like why do I want to read music man I mean I play music, like that's what music is isn't it man? I mean I play my own music what do I want to like read it for” (id, 551).

#96

“(...) changeover in the magazine's title form Her to She, passive to active image whole new concept came out of in-depth studies on potential readership modern gal's self-image came a long way baby clean freak from this old-fashioned passive Her flat on her back missionary position, new concept gets her right up in the saddle putting the boots to here” (id, 535).

#94

“Man you keep saying you write this music but like everything I see you say it's some business you're in” (id, 369).

#93

“I hope every reader will, from this history, take warning, and stamp improvement on the wings of time problem most God damned readers rather be at the movies” (id, 289).

#92

“How do you think it makes me feel, why do you think we don't go to parties anymore, because I have too much to drink? Yes why because all of you, you and his friends and these editors asking about his next great book shaking their heads admiring how hard he works to support us, me and David but what a tragedy for American literature how do you think that makes me feel? The great Thomas Eigen's talent being thrown away in a stupid job because he has to make a decent living for his wife and son he resents every bill he pays, the rent, nursery school, he even resents that, paying David nursery school and food, three lam chops Jack, three lamb chops! A decent living standing in that kitchen looking down at that man with no hands and, no face, just a burn scar with holes in it” (id, 270).

#88

“The function of this school is custodial. It's here to keep these kids off the streets until the girls are big enough to get pregnant and the boys are old enough to go out and holdup a gas station, it's strictly custodial and the rest is plumbing. If these teachers of yours strike just sit and still and keep the door opens open, by the time these kids have been lying around the house for a week their parents will march the teachers back at gunpoint” (id, 226).

#87

“– Yes but that's what you mean isn't it, about creating an entirely different world when you write an opera, about asking the audience to suspend their belief in the...
– Not asking them, making them, like that E flat chord that opens the Rhinegold goes on and on it goes on for a hundred and thirty-six bars until the idea that everything's happening under water is more real that sitting on a hot plush seat with tight shoes on and...” (id, 111).

#86

“– That's juts a, it's what we call a news release it's just a story about something that's going to happen and we write it to help out the newspapers so that when the...
– Like you get to write these here news which it didn't even happen yet?
– Well that's not exactly what, what I meant boys and girls a story like this we haven't told anybody yet because Mister Moncrieff's appointment hasn't been made yet officially” (id, 107).

#83

“Get it? Art? You get it where you get anything you buy (...) don't try and tell me in this day and age there isn't enough around for everybody great art, pictures music books who's heard all the great music there is, you? You read all the great books there are? seen all these great pictures? Records of any symphony you want reproductions you can get them that are almost perfect, the greatest books ever written you can get them at the drugstore” (id, 48).

#82

“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 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 assume that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos” (Gaddis, 2003: 20).

GADDIS, William (2003). J R. London: Atlantic Books.