William T. Vollmann Quotes

The skin of her naked throat was as perfect as a political idea. She

The sunny times of footsore joy on Arctic islands, for instance, when I reached ice and could glide almost effortlessly through coolness more dazzling than music.

Bones, murdered or merely perished, ought to stay silent. That's the law. But, quick and shrill as a violin-screech, they come back, to the terror of all who stand guilty of living, and then they danc...

But I don't think a river wants anything, except to be itself. Just like anybody and anything. I don't think it claimed a soul. I don't think it's at all vindictive or vicious, just itself. It just se...

But how could he explain anything to them, when they understood good but not goodness, strong but not strength, black but not blackness? Give us bread! the Savages cried. Heal us!They were frightened...

But illusions don’t die all at once—

By your command, sir, I said. But Elena was still the one I loved. Knowing that I loved her, I knew who I was.

Do you want to know what happiness is? Happiness is the absence of unpleasant information. I

E. Kruglikova, who in real life might never have met him (I have no confirmed information on this), smiled lustrously; she was wearing a formal black dress and a necklace of frozen tears. Their friend...

I know it’s ridiculous, but I sometimes feel that my love for her is the only thing that’s genuine about me.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, continued Comrade Luria, how much aestheticians like to prate about the impotence of form without content, or content without form. But in music, perfect form and content toge...

Jimmy decided to get drunk—not just drunk enough to enjoy life (here he grinned, and Cecily smiled back), not just drunk enough to fuck Cecily for instance up the ass without a rubber, not just drunk...

L. Moholy-Nagy once wrote: Penetration of the body with light is one of the greatest visual experiences. And so I came back into my Germany, the real Germany, where the sunlight was as white as Heydri...

Self-deception is a pessimistic definition of optimism.

So many revolutionaries are intellectuals, a class of people whose aspirations tend to run ahead of their capabilities.

So then, in a pleading tone, he whispers: Why did you make me? I never wanted to be made… For propaganda, of course. It’s all in your own book. How can we persuade others to be good, without evil we c...

When they’d been children there’d been a fallen log in the river, and John had walked on it, keeping his balance, instructing his brother: If you don’t think about it, you won’t fall.—That would be a...

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

And so we all write stories to suit ourselves, and I wish happy endings, happy landings to all of us

As he breathed the black and grey air into his body he no longer thought of anything as lovely, the way the retiring trees of his boyhood had been; for everything was made up of dirt-clods; and you do...