100 Quotes by William T. Vollmann

"I decided that there is really some sort of entity that I call Imperial, and I decided to extend it all the way along the California-Mexico border and into Tijuana and then to the Pacific because it all has a similar feeling."

"Some friends and I, we went right up there behind the studio and we got on a train, we could tell it was going to go to Roseville. We got off it and got on another train. And we got to Roseville, and it takes hours to get through that yard. It's really big. So we ended up just coming back here. It's like fishing or hunting. You can't always come back with something."

"So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk."

"Lovers may never meet again, but the ways of enemies oft do intersect: This proves some corollary about gravity."

"We all lived for money, and that is what we died for."

"Whereas if I want to create a prostitute character now from memories of different prostitutes and inventing stuff, I can say, “this could happen,” “this is quite plausible.” But I don’t feel I know enough about border life to do the latter."

"I feel like I’m almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don’t think I know quite enough to do it right."

"There will come a time when nobody reads my books and no one remembers who I was. And in the meantime, I’ll do it my way."

"I wish I could go back and rewrite my first book, You Bright and Risen Angels; I could do a better job. But in the meantime, nobody knows as much about my books as I do. Nobody has the right but me to say which words go into my books or get deleted or edited. When I’m dying, I’ll smile, knowing I stood up for my books. If I die with more money, that wouldn’t bring a smile to my face. Unless I got better drugs or more delicious-looking nurses."

"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."