William H. Gass Quotes

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

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I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

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It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

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Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal

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For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

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As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

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Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house

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Every day he thought would last forever, and the night forever, and the dawn drag eternally another long and empty day to light forever; yet they sped away, the day, the night...

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Some screw for science only in the afternoon, while others keep their faith with evening - here Orcutt chuckled - it's a matter of light, I understand, but which makes which I can't remember.

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And how would he learn his history now? Imagine growing up in a world where only generals and geniuses, empires and companies, had histories, not your own town or grandfather, house or Samantha - none of the things you’d loved.

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...until summer becomes ein Zimmer in einem Traum - a room in a dream.

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It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play - the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and purpose of life - its facility, its use.

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