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
“The smoke detectors began to ring; for they were battery-powered and thus still functioned, just as a record can still be played… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“Unlike most inmates of that epoch, the woman could see the future as brightly as if it were a six-pointed star of… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
When I'm dying, I want to think I did what I felt was best for the words I was writing. This may… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
I didn't vote for Bush, and I'm not happy particularly that he's president. But I will say I'm impressed that he didn't… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“I do most sincerely believe that ethical behavior as we best construe it ought to be followed by us throughout our lives,… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“The blood kept welling up and getting over things so that she couldn’t see what she was doing, which annoyed her; but… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
You could imagine writing about a prostitute, for instance, but if you haven't spent time with prostitutes then you're going to get… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“At the time that he had seriously begun to consolidate his organization, Parker was working in a custom photo lab. The reader… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“Bug, meanwhile, had learned at Marshtown that might made right, and he got older and paler, his head downcast like a nodding… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“Better by far that famous poster of the Red Army woman with one hand on her hip, another on her bemedaled breast,… — William T. Vollmann Copy Share Image
“Frank thought. Each time he became someone else’s spy it got easier. The ideological virgin usually finds his first time an excruciating… — 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
