“In the Hitler years we still believed in books enough to burn them. Imagine,” — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
I'm still a marginal figure living from book to book, but, as long as I'm producing labour as a good Marxist prole,… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
There will come a time when nobody reads my books and no one remembers who I was. And in the meantime, I'll… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“This is my final book. Any subsequent productions bearing my name will have been composed by a ghost.” — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“For propaganda, of course. It’s all in your own book. How can we persuade others to be good, without evil we can… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
It's fun for me to try to write concise, compact things. It's a very good exercise for me. And I think it's… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
If I'm writing a book, and I'm warned, 'Oh, this is unsaleable, you need to make it shorter,' or, 'It has to… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“After all, one of life’s best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“Great art projects a sense of inexhaustibility. In literature, particularly in poetry, this may be accomplished through ambiguity: Beneath each and every… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
I studied Comparative Literature at Cornell. Structuralism was real big then. The idea of reading and writing as being this language game.… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“This book was written by a traitor to his class. It is dedicated to bigots everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen of the black… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
When I was writing the first few books, what I would do is write a bunch of sentences and then go back… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
I wish I could go back and rewrite my first book, You Bright and Risen Angels; I could do a better job.… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“There was the biography of a Norwegian resistance fighter who swam through chilly oceans and got gangrene and wandered through I think… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“I just make the best book that I can and try to not worry about audience or if it will sell. The… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
Some friends and I, we went right up there behind the studio and we got on a train, we could tell it was going… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
I read and write for most of the day, but I do let myself be interrupted by real life. I enjoy going out with… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
“A treble clef, for example, resembles a Muscovite or Leningrader in a bulky hooded parka. A bass clef bends as simply and painfully as… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
Oh, ants, my sisters, good old honeydew-seekers! From close up you are sticky and shiny and gristly; and your nymphs have parasitic red mites… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
If I didn't feel that I was doing something or trying to do something for others, then I would have very little excuse for… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible. — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
“The shortest man, codenamed RIMSKY, said to me that freedom means understanding our place within the laws of history; we are more free when… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
“Do you want to know what happiness is? Happiness is the absence of unpleasant information.” — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
My father hates organized religion, probably because he hates the God who killed his little girl back in 1968. I find religions variously bemusing. — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
There's an Inuit myth about the origin of the human race. There were two brothers, and the younger brother eventually gets changed into a… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
I first got really interested in Noh in about 1977. There was an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana where I was going to high… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
“More aid, better directed! Couldn't we all use that? And what if the universe enacts less aid, more poorly directed?” — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
“whatever fate sends us quickly becomes us, and we grow blind to what we might otherwise have been. And” — William T. Vollmann Copy Share
