Quotes by William T. Vollmann

About William T. Vollmann:

William Tanner Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Europe Central. He lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife and daughter.
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

Are you a censor? Do you tell people not to say “girl”? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, you’re a saint or you’re psychotic. If a few things offend you, deal with them--fairly. If you’re often offended by things, you’re probably a se...

William T. Vollmann

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 ...

William T. Vollmann

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible...

William T. Vollmann

But where corpses were buried secretly, there the grass grows thick; such signs (and there are ever so many others!) may be read by those to whom truth is more important than beauty.

William T. Vollmann

(Can you understand your own dreams, which arise with mushrooms' rank richness in the night-forests within your skull?)

William T. Vollmann

Looking at her, thinking of her transported him, which struck him as vile because now it was hard for him not to despise the icy serenity of their earlier relations. And he knew that he should not love her, for she had been someone else whom he was s...

William T. Vollmann

Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.

William T. Vollmann

Great art projects a sense of inexhaustibility. In literature, particularly in poetry, this may be accomplished through ambiguity: Beneath each and every meaning that I can descry lie others, so that rereading holds out the prospect of new subtleties...

William T. Vollmann

The hospital bulked darkly in the darkness.

William T. Vollmann

Life is an extended camping trip. With a leaky, inferior tent one runs no more risk of rain than anyone else; but if it does rain, the person in the cheap tent chances soaking in his sleeping bag, and possibly dying of hypothermia.

William T. Vollmann

But, as I have said, the bugs had no interest in getting us…and no great curiosity or enthusiasm about us as such; from the cowardly cockroaches to the blind stolid ants they wanted only to be left alone to eat and breed and eat and breed, just lik...

William T. Vollmann

The smoke detectors began to ring; for they were battery-powered and thus still functioned, just as a record can still be played after the death of every member of the orchestra.

William T. Vollmann

In the preface of "The Rifles" "Another rule we followed was never kill an animal that we were not going to use for food or clothing." Barnabas Piryuaq "Well, in those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did n...

William T. Vollmann

When I'm dying, I want to think I did what I felt was best for the words I was writing. This may mean, at any time, that I won't be publishable anymore.

William T. Vollmann

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 experie...

William T. Vollmann

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'...

William T. Vollmann

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....

William T. Vollmann

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 th...

William T. Vollmann

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 ...

William T. Vollmann

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 ...

William T. Vollmann

Author Bio

  • NameWilliam T. Vollmann
  • DescriptionNovelist, short story writer, essayist
  • BornJuly 28, 1959
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist; Essayist; War Correspondent; Short Story Writer
  • AwardsNational Book Award