Quotes by William H. Gass

About William H. Gass:

William Howard Gass is an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor. He has written three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which have won National Book Critics Circle Award prizes and one of which, A Temple of Texts (2006), won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. His 1995 novel The Tunnel received the American Book Award. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Dean Howells Medal.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 language in that sentence, and...

William H. Gass

It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play — the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and...

William H. Gass

...until summer becomes -- a room in a dream.

William H. Gass

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

William H. Gass

He could have set fire to it, the garden was dry enough, and burned it clean—privet, vines, and weeds; but he waited in his rooms through the winter instead, weeping and dreaming.

William H. Gass

And how would he learn his history now? Imagine growing up in a world where only generals and geniuses, empires and companies, had histories, not your own town or grandfather, house or Samantha—none of the things you’d loved.

William H. Gass

Some screw for science only in the afternoon, while others keep their faith with evening—here Orcutt chuckled—it's a matter of light, I understand, but which makes which I can't remember.

William H. Gass

The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoni...

William H. Gass

Wills aren't really strong or weak; it is the characters that they express and serve that are.

William H. Gass

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

William H. Gass

The responsibility of any science, any pure pursuit, is ultimately to itself, and on this point physics, philosophy, and poetry unite with Satan in their determination not to serve. Any end is higher than utility, when ends are up.

William H. Gass

Every day he thought would last forever, and the night forever, and the dawn drag eternally another long and empty day to light forever; yet they sped away, the day, the night...

William H. Gass

We converse as we live by repeating, by combining and recombining a few elements over and over again just as nature does when of elementary particles it builds a world.

William H. Gass

For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.

William H. Gass

Getting even is one reason for writing.

William H. Gass

If there were genders to genres, fiction would be unquestionably feminine.

William H. Gass

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

William H. Gass

Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal

William H. Gass

If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is an answer. I write because I hate. A lot. Hard. And if someone asks me the inevitable next dumb question, “Why do you wr...

William H. Gass

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 deprived: cut out their tongues … allow them a language as lousy as their life

William H. Gass

Author Bio

  • NameWilliam H. Gass
  • DescriptionFiction writer, critic, philosophy professor
  • BornJuly 30, 1924
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionOfficer; Novelist; Journalist; Essayist; Writer
  • WorksThe Tunnel; Omensetter's Luck
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship