William H. Gass ✓

(1924–2017) novelist United States

40 quotes in 792 categories

William H. Gass (1924–2017) was a United States novelist, known for In the Heart of the Heart of the Country|Omensetter's Luck|The Tunnel|Middle C.

Best William H. Gass Quotes

• I am firmly of the opinion that people who can’t speak have nothing to say. It’s one more thing we do to the poor, the… Allow
• Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often… Dream
• It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word Fiction
• The word itself has another color. It’s not a word with any resonance, although the e was once pronounced. There is only the bump now… Another Color
• So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not… Attention
• I don't know myself, what to do, where to go... I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort... it's what the world… Alone
• [As] authorities "over" us are removed, as we wobble out on our own, the question of whether to be or not to be arises with… Arise
• I write because I hate. A lot. Hard. Hard
• And I am in retirement from love. From
• The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words. Alchemist
• 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… Center
• it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday. Behind
• Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated. Badly
• We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take… Believed
• In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry… Advance
• Books didn't figure in my family very much. . . . However, my grandmother's attic was full of old, old books . . . In… Attic

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