“As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready… — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
If you were a fully realized person-whatever the hell that would be-you wouldn't fool around writing books. — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
I publish a piece in order to kill it, so that I won't have to fool around with it any longer. — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words. — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
I usually have poor to absent relations with editors because they have a habit of desiring changes and I resist changes. — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it. — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is… — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
“Furthermore, the initial page, always crucial, passed every test, with its promises and divisions, its portentous opening paragraph like the great door… — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
When reviewers take the trouble to compliment a writer on her style, it is usually because she has made it easy for… — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I… — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
“If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless,… — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
“Try to remember that artists in these catastrophic times, along with the serious scientists, are the only salvation for us, if there is to… — William H. Gass Copy Share
“If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is… — William H. Gass Copy Share
The things that stayed were things that didn't matter except they stayed, night and day, all seasons the same, and were peaceful to a… — William H. Gass Copy Share
When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid. — William H. Gass Copy Share
“It's a simple world for her. A curtain fluttering - that's how she is - lives, moves - obediently, yet with every appearnace of… — William H. Gass Copy Share
“I dreamed my lips would drift down your back like a skiff on a river. I'd follow a vein with the point of my… — William H. Gass Copy Share
“Yes, we call it recursive, the act of reading, of looping the loop, of continually returning to an earlier group of words, behaving like… — William H. Gass Copy Share
“Then let us have a language worthy of our world, a democratic style where rich and well-born nouns can roister with some sluttish verb… — William H. Gass Copy Share
We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who… — William H. Gass Copy Share
We converse as we live by repeating, by combining and recombining a few elements over and over again just as nature does when of… — William H. Gass Copy Share
“Why were they whining then?...whining, damn them, whining… Because they’d have to give up their hope of living like an animal and return to… — William H. Gass Copy Share
Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated. — William H. Gass Copy Share
