For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock. — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
“If the relation of morality to art were based simply on the demand that art be concerned with values, then almost every author should satisfy it even if he wrote with his prick while asleep. (Puritans will object to the… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid. — William H. Gass Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
