William Gaddis

He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

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.

How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible.

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