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
change compact exercise fair good repeating
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.
attracted man precisely spectator themselves women
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.
earth gender great life pick women wrought
So much of the destruction on Earth has been wrought by men. Women are the ones who give life and try to pick up the pieces... What a great gender they are.
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.
entered eventually full good notebooks takes
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.
grew parochial white
My father grew up in an era when to be an American - a white American, at least - was to be yourself. In some respects, his generation was more ignorant, complacent, self-centered and parochial than mine.
pay
If I'm writing a book, and I'm warned, 'Oh, this is unsaleable, you need to make it shorter,' or, 'It has to be this, or that,' I'm proud to say I don't pay attention.
art free human language people personally remind wonder
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. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.
death imagine pleasant
It's always, you know, a pleasant exercise to imagine my own death because then I'm so happy when I can stop.
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.
felt
I've always felt I want to be of service to the world somehow. I haven't yet figured out how to do it, and I may never figure out how to do it.
japan might stories
I might enjoy writing some ghost stories set in Japan because their whole idea about the spirit world is so interesting.
begin fiction ignorance knowledge someplace takes
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.
chance falling fascinated lots noticed people sleepy studied
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.