The ship's surgeon was a spotty unshaven little man whose clothes, arrayed with smudges, drippings, and cigarette burns, were held about him by an extensive network of knotted string, The buttons down the front of those duck trousers had originally been made, with all of false economy's ingenious drear deception, of coated cardboard. After many launderings they persisted as a row of gray stumps posted along the gaping portals of his fly. Though a boutoniere sometimes appeared through some vacancy in his shirt-front, its petals, too, proved to be of paper, and he looked like the kind of man who scrapes foam from the top of a glass of beer with the spine of a dirty pocket comb, and cleans his nails at table with the tines of his salad fork, which things, indeed, he did. He diagnosed Camilla's difficulty as indigestion, and locked himself in his cabin. that was the morning. William Gaddis
He was still thoughtful. 'Do you think any of us ever really knows anyone?' 'Philosophy, Lord Dryden? And yet it's daylight and everyone is still sober.
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Julie Anne Long
He shook his head in wonder. "You are magnificent."" I keep telling everyone that, " she said with a nonchalant shrug, "But you seem to be the only one to believe me.
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Julia Quinn
For a long moment the butler sat in silence, his jaw hanging open. “I. my lord, I simply don't feel qualified to advise you about such matters.”“ Don't tell me that, ” Saint protested. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>“Tell me whether you can imagine me as a...
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Suzanne Enoch
Forgive me for saying so, Your Highness, " Clarissa said slowly, "but for one as unaccustomed to good deeds as you, perhaps it would be best if you started with one on a smaller scale. Something like, I don't know, spreading bread crumbs for birds?""...
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Victoria Alexander
There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you’re determined to dislike for no good reason.
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Gregory David Roberts
More Quotes By William Gaddis
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
-Money? in a voice that rustled.
The room was filled with smoke, dry worn-out smoke retaining in it like a web the insectile cadavers of dry husks of words which had been spoken and should be gone, the breaths exhaled not to be breathed again. But the words went on, and...
Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions.
Justice? -- You get justice in the next world. In this one you have the law.
