William Gaddis Quotes

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

We can't get our youth back.

I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

I was the future once.

I used to love getting older.

I think I missed out on so many good experiences - maybe priceless experiences - playing with my friends when I was growing up.

I feel like I wasted my time in my twenties. When you are beginning to realise your potential you wish you'd realized it earlier.

Free - I miss that band, but when I look back, we were very young.

Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away.

Have we not all, amid life's petty strife, Some pure ideal of a noble life That once seemed possible? Did we not hear The flutter of its wings, and feel it near, And just within our reach? It was. And yet We lost it in this daily jar and fret, And now live idle in a vague regret; But still our place is kept, and it will wait, Ready for us to fill it, soon or late. No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been.

You couldn't get hold of the things you'd done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

One voyage to the East and a man could live as rich as a lord until the end of his days. When he'd been younger, Davos had dreamed of making such voyages himself. But the years went dancing by like moths around a flame, and somehow the time had never been quite right.

You can tell it any way you want but that's the way it is. I should of done it and I didnt. And some part of me has never quit wishin I could go back. And I cant. I didn't know you could steal your own life. And I didnt know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal. I thinkI done the best with itI knew how but itstill wasntmine. It neverhas been.

I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.

Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?

Oh rage! Oh despair! Oh age, my enemy!

As we grow older I always think, why didn't I do more when I was young, why didn't I risk more?

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

I spent my whole childhood wishing I were older and now I'm spending my adulthood wishing I were younger.

My birthday is Feb. 11, and I'm both excited and not excited by it. You'll never be 15 again, and you really, really need to savor every day like it's your last.

It's hard to watch something you've done many years ago.

I wouldn't go back and be 25 again for all the tea in China.