William T. Vollmann
William T. Vollmann
William Tanner Vollmannis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 July 1959
CountryUnited States of America
based human minimize opportunity whenever
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.
bunch expand explode few pack sentences stuff
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.
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I'm still a marginal figure living from book to book, but, as long as I'm producing labour as a good Marxist prole, I guess I'm satisfied.
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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.
girl god hates organized religion religions
My father hates organized religion, probably because he hates the God who killed his little girl back in 1968. I find religions variously bemusing.
change decline impulses inevitable mention passive petty physical resentment tragedies turned
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.
americas definitely dominant ghetto ignore parallel people poor prefer second tends
I think that there always have been and always will be at least two Americas - the poor America, the second America, tends to be in the shadows. Sometimes it's an America of people in a ghetto of color, sometimes it's an economic ghetto, but definitely there is a parallel America which people in the dominant America prefer to ignore if they can.
believe candy celestial expect god good life morality people personal piece reason whether
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.
case common consider far hunter invisible measure money number people relation society themselves unwanted useful
A common measure of poverty is how much money you have in relation to other people - that is useful as far as it goes, but that excludes the case of, say, a hunter in the rainforest who has no money but is not poor. And there can be a number of people with money but who can consider themselves unwanted or invisible or estranged from society.
best felt time
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.
Kabuki is the way that I so often write; Noh is how I would write if I were more 'spiritual,' more understated, or perhaps just older.
closer death few people realize
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.
excuse life trying
If I didn't feel that I was doing something or trying to do something for others, then I would have very little excuse for the life that I lead.
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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.