I first got really interested in Noh in about 1977. There was an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana where I was going to high school. It was a really nice place. There was a New Directions paperback. It was the… — 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. There's a lot of appeal to that. It's nice to think of it as this playful kind of… — 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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible. — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“Do you want to know what happiness is? Happiness is the absence of unpleasant information.” — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
