William T. Vollmann Quotes

American - Novelist Born: July 28, 1959

As I get older, I find myself getting angrier and angrier. Doubtless, change itself, not to mention physical decline and inevitable petty tragedies of disappointed expectations, would have made for resentment in any event; but I used to be a passive schoolboy, my negative impulses turned obediently inward. William T. Vollmann

Used, Turned, Schoolboy

Whenever we have an opportunity to engage with each other as human beings and to minimize the differences between us based on disparity in resources, then we should do it. William T. Vollmann

Other, Based, Minimize

After college, I went to San Francisco and worked as a secretary in a reinsurance company. That was a pretty dismal job. It was a real small place. Guys would come in, and they'd sort of stick out their arms like wings so I could take their coats off. They'd tell me, 'Two,' and I'd put two lumps of sugar in their coffee. William T. Vollmann

College, Small, Francisco

The case of Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union is the clearest case of good against evil that I've seen in my lifetime. I thought it was terrific the way they got their country back. William T. Vollmann

Thought, Country, Clearest

The first chance I had to go to Japan, which was in the early nineties, I went to a Noh play. I thought, 'This is very, very slow.' I noticed lots of people falling asleep. I didn't really know what was going on; I was getting a little sleepy myself. Then the more I studied it, the more fascinated I got. William T. Vollmann

Thought, Play, Very

Everybody is an expert on one thing - that's what I learned in my high school journalism class - and that's, of course, his own life. And everybody deserves to live and have his story told. And if it doesn't seem like an interesting story, then that's the failure of the listener, or the journalist who retells it badly. William T. Vollmann

Everybody, Expert, Badly

Whenever I travel to a poor country, I try to help at least one person. Usually, that person helps me just as much - I can find a local poor person to be my guide or my interpreter. That person makes money from me, I make money from him or her, we both learn about each other. It's an equal win-win relationship. William T. Vollmann

Country, Other, Least

I don't believe in a personal god. It's good to give thanks, whether or not there's a god. There's no reason not to live life to the fullest. Morality is all the more important for people who don't expect to get a piece of celestial candy after they die. William T. Vollmann

Candy, Die, Reason

When I was writing the first few books, what I would do is write a bunch of sentences and then go back and expand and explode those sentences, pack as much into them as I could, so they'd kind of be like popcorn kernels popping... all this stuff in there to make the writing dense, and beautiful for its density. William T. Vollmann

Popcorn, Sentences, Popping

It's fun for me to try to write concise, compact things. It's a very good exercise for me. And I think it's important to try to do different things - change what I write about, and also the way I write. Otherwise, I'd just be repeating myself, which wouldn't be good for me or fair to my readers. William T. Vollmann

I Think, Very, Compact

Once you've finished typing and moving text around and everything else, you have to leave it alone for a while. You do that to see if it stands up, to see if all the loose edges have been trimmed, if it makes sense, if it's consistent, what shape it really has. You can't tell that while you're working on it. William T. Vollmann

Tell, Been, While

Everybody is probably guilty of something. I'm sure that if anyone looked into my heart long enough, they could say, you know, 'Bill had some unkind thoughts back in second grade.' William T. Vollmann

Back, Everybody, Some

Really what it gets down to is that my idea of the American life, the American dream, whatever, is that I can do what I wish in the privacy of my own home. And as long as I'm not hurting anyone, no one has a right to know what I do. The main thing that I have to hide is that I don't have anything to hide. William T. Vollmann

Own, Idea, Main Thing

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 woman. And that's how humans reproduced. And I thought, 'How could I really understand that?' William T. Vollmann

Woman, Thought, Brothers

Not only am I physically and emotionally attracted to women, I also wonder what being a woman would be like. William T. Vollmann

Woman, Like, Also

I think most of us who live into our 50s have had a few experiences with death. You know, we see people we know start to die. We realize it's getting closer and closer for us. William T. Vollmann

Think, Die, I Think

I go through all of my old notebooks, and I put an X on every page when everything has been entered into the computer, and sometimes that takes 15 years. But eventually the notebooks are full of X's, and they're no good to me anymore. William T. Vollmann

Sometimes, Through, Been

It's always, you know, a pleasant exercise to imagine my own death because then I'm so happy when I can stop. William T. Vollmann

Death, Always, Imagine

At least for me, it takes more knowledge to write fiction than nonfiction. At least about someplace that I begin with a lot of ignorance about. William T. Vollmann

More, Fiction, Least

I think that we're all, as human beings, so limited. If we want to write about ourselves, that's fairly easy. And if we write about our friends or our families, we can do that. But if we want to project ourselves somewhere beyond our personal experience, we're going to fail unless we get that experience or we borrow it from others. William T. Vollmann

Project, I Think, About

When I go train hopping and I look up into the sky, there are always so many more stars than I remember there were. William T. Vollmann

Sky, Always, I Remember

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 Pound/Fenollosa book, 'The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan.' William T. Vollmann

Book, Independent, Japan

Precisely because I'm a man who is attracted to women, there may be some things that I have to say as a spectator of feminine grace that women themselves may not be able to see. William T. Vollmann

May, Some, Feminine

I might enjoy writing some ghost stories set in Japan because their whole idea about the spirit world is so interesting. William T. Vollmann

Some, Stories, Set

Don't write for money. William T. Vollmann

The instant people specialize, it's in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon. William T. Vollmann

Interest, Specialized

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