#181

“Cool media are high in participation, on completion, by the audience. And I have always taken that to heart, that sometimes it can be a dangerous practice.
I'm not reader-friendly. I do ask something of the reader, and many reviewers say I ask too much; even some of them who like my work say, but it's work, it's difficult; and as I say, it's not reader-friendly.
Though I think it is, and I think that a reader gets satisfaction out of participating in, collaborating, if you will, with the writer, so that ends up being between the reader and the page, without this whole world of giving readings” (id, 229-230).

“Now everybody–”

“I feel like part of the vanishing breed that thinks a writer should be read and not heard, let alone seen. I think this is because there seems so often today to be a tendency to put the person in the place of his or her work, to turn the creative artist into a performing one, to find what a writer says about writing somehow more valid, or more real, than the writing itself” (id, 222).

#179

“We are thousands and they are millions, write the fiction they want or don't write at all, ruling out Pound's cry for the new, the challenging or what's labeled difficult, so when Gravity's Rainbow is being devoured by college youth everywhere and wins the National Book Award, its unanimous recommendation by the Pulitzer jury is overturned by the trustees for a double-talk spoof of academic vagaries by a bogus “Professor”” (id, 42).

On religion

“In other words, we are all in the same line of business: that of concocting, arranging, and peddling fictions to get us safely through the night” (id, 189).

The rush for second place

“The day's mail brings flyers offering courses in Mid-life Crisis, Stress Management, Success Through Assertiveness, Reflexology, Shiatsu, Hypnocybernetics, and The Creative You. Books disappear overnight or are instant “best-sellers”: mortifying confessionals and est, group therapy, primal screams and “making it,” pious plagiaries on moral fiction and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's TM Technique for reducing blood pressure and increasing self-esteem. Even impotence is briefly chic; the movie screen offers the dreary sentimental humanisms of Woody Allen achieved at the expense of cast and audience alike and, for the beer crowd, Rocky” (id, 142).

#176

“These poets and other artists must not show indecency and intemperance so the first thing to be done is to censor writers of fiction or they'll corrupt the citizens growing up among images of moral deformity, because youth can't tell the difference between allegory and what's literal” (id, 47).

#175

“Write what they want and you'll end up with a Pulitzer Prize follow you tight to the grave. Maybe won the George Cross even the Nobel but once you've been stigmatized with the ultimate seal of mediocrity your obit will read Pulitzer Prize Novelist Dies (...) The prize winners? They're just props, cartoonists, sports writers, political pundits, front page photos the bloodier the better for that instant of fame wrap the fish in tomorrow, good God how many Pulitzer Prizes are there? Over fifteen hundred entries, fourteen categories” (id, 41).

#174

“Of course you can't really explain anything to anybody that's why all we hear are explanations of these explanations get right back to Wiener with his more complicated the message the more chance for error” (id, 36).

#172

“That's what my work is about, the collapse of everything, of meaning, of language, of values, of art, disorder and dislocation wherever you look, entropy drowning everything in sight, entertainment and technology and every four year old with a computer, everybody his own artist where the whole thing came from, the binary system and the computer where the technology came from the first place, you see? (...) whole stupified mob out there waiting to be entertained, turning the creative artist into a performer, into a celebrity like Byron, the man in the place of its work” (Gaddis, 3-4).

GADDIS, William (2004). Agapē Agape And Other Writings. London: Atlantic Books.

#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).