Audacity

“It is, in fact, quite an act of ego to sit down in a room, while others are getting on trains and subways, and put one’s vision on paper, and then ask others to pay to read it. Not only to pay but say, ‘Isn’t he brilliant.’ It’s an act of audacity.”

--William Gaddis, in interview with Tom LeClair, 1980, collected in Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System, edited by Joseph Tabbi and Rone Shavers, 2007