“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).

#173

“Sex is difficult to write about because it's just not sexy enough. The only way to write about it is not to write much. Let the reader bring his own sexuality into the text. A writer I usually admire has written about sex in the most off-putting way. There is just too much information. If you start saying “the curve of...” you soon sound like gynecologist. Only Joyce could get away with that. He said all those forbidden words. He said cunt, and that was shocking. The forbidden word can be provocative. But after it becomes monotonous rather than arousing. Less is always better” (id, 147).

#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.

#171

“Your fear of death removes the fear.
Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers; he knows that in the day
Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear,
Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then
Opened and cleared, and ye shall be gods,
Knowing both good and evil as they know.”(id, IX. 702-709)

#170

“O foul descent! That I who erst contended
With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime,
This essence to incarnate and imbrute,
That to the heighth of Deity aspired” (id, IX. 163-167)

#169

“(...) In solitude
What happiness, who can enjoy alone,
or all enjoying, what contentment find?” (id, VIII. 364-366)

#168

“But knowledge is food , and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain,
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.” (id, VII. 124-130)

#167

“One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge called,
Forbidden them to taste: knowledge forbidd'n?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be sin to know,
Can it be death? And do they only stand
By ignorance, is that their happy state,
The proof of their obedience and their faith?
O fair foundation laid whereon to build
Their ruin!” (id, IV. 514-522)

#166

“Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp” (id, II. 255-257)

#165

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n” (id, I. 263)

#164

“Innumerable force of Spirits armed
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heav'n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what else is not to be overcome?” (Milton, I. 101-109)

MILTON, John (2003). Paradise Lost. London: Penguin Books.