William H. Gass Quotes

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

    Book   Writing   Kids  
    William H. Gass (2010). “A Temple of Texts”, p.37, Knopf Group E-Books
  • 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

    Dream   Psychosis   House  
  • But the body fails us and the mirror knows, and we no longer insist that the gray hush be carried off its surface by the cloth, for we have run to fat, and wrinkles encircle the eyes and notch the neck where the skin wattles, and the flesh of the arms hangs loose like an overlarge sleeve, veins thicken like ropes and empurple the body as though they had been drawn there by a pen, freckles darken, liver spots appear, the hairah, the hair is exhausted and gray and lusterless, in weary rolls like cornered lint.

    Running   Eye   Mirrors  
  • The body of Our Saviour shat but Our Saviour shat not.

    Body   Saviour  
    "Why you should read: William H Gass" by Seth Colter Walls, www.theguardian.com. November 3, 2015.
  • I do think of my reader, or listener, really, more often, if I give a lecture, for example, and I know that I'm talking to these people; I enjoy sort of preening them a bit. But it's a matter of decorum, basically.

    The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. November 2005.
  • What one wants to do with stories is screw them up.

    Stories   Crafts   Want  
    William H. Gass (1997). “Finding a Form: Essays”, p.46, Cornell University Press
  • Only the slow reader will notice the odd crowd of images-flier, butcher, seal-which have gathered to comment on the aims and activities of the speeding reader, perhaps like gossips at a wedding.

    Reading   Gossip   Crowds  
  • I do have a very conscious desire not to be academic. I'm antiacademic. I hate jargon. I hate that sort of pretension. I am a person who [commits] breaches of decorum - not in private life, but in my work. They are part of my mode of operation. That kind of playfulness is part of my nature in general. The paradox that, in a way, to take something very seriously, you can't always be serious about it.

    Hate   Desire   Jargon  
    Interview with Stephen Schenkenberg, www.believermag.com. November, 2005.
  • So if hunger provokes wailing and wailing brings the breast; if the breast permits sucking and milk suggests its swallow; if swallowing issues in sleep and stomachy comfort, then need, ache, message, object, act, and satisfaction are soon associated like charms on a chain; shortly our wants begin to envision the things which well reduce them, and the organism is finally said to wish.

    Sleep   Issues   Wish  
  • I publish a piece in order to kill it, so that I won't have to fool around with it any longer.

    Writing   Order   Pieces  
    William H. Gass, Theodore G. Ammon (2003). “Conversations with William H. Gass”, p.34, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • Philosophy has a great sort of appeal in terms of an artistic or aesthetic organization of concepts. It's a conceptual art.

    Interview with Stephen Schenkenberg, www.believermag.com. November, 2005.
  • Works of art are meant to be lived with and loved, and if we try to understand them, we should try to understand them as we try to understand anyone — in order to know them better, not in order to know something else.

    Art   Order   Trying  
    "The Artist and Society” by William H. Gass, medium.com. 1968.
  • Some people say their life is full of darkness and I wonder why they don't just try and switch the lights on.

    Light   People   Darkness  
  • I don't know myself, what to do, where to go... I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort... it's what the world offers... please leave me alone to dream as I fancy.

    Dream   Lying   Book  
  • Surely it's better to live in the country, to live on a prairie by a drawing of rivers, in Iowa or Illinois or Indiana, say, than in any city, in any stinking fog of human beings, in any blooming orchard of machines. It ought to be.

    Country   Illinois   Fog  
    William H. Gass (1968). “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories”, p.193, David R. Godine Publisher
  • The things that stayed were things that didn't matter except they stayed, night and day, all seasons the same, and were peaceful to a fault and boded no ill but thought well enough of themselves to repeat their presences.

    Night   Peaceful   Matter  
  • I get very tense working, so I often have to get up and wander around the house. It is very bad on my stomach. I have to be mad to be working well anyway, and then I am mad about the way things are going on the page in addition. My ulcer flourishes and I have to chew lots of pills. When my work is going well, I am usually sort of sick.

    Mad   Sick   House  
    William H. Gass, Theodore G. Ammon (2003). “Conversations with William H. Gass”, p.34, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.

    Beautiful   Fall   Found  
  • I was struck by the way in which meanings are historically attached to words: it is so accidental, so remote, so twisted. A word is like a schoolgirl's room--a complete mess--so the great thing is to make out a way of seeing it all as ordered, as right, as inferred and following.

    Way   Rooms   Twisted  
    William H. Gass, Theodore G. Ammon (2003). “Conversations with William H. Gass”, p.23, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • As a teacher, it's a great help to be teaching philosophical systems you don't believe. You can actually do a better job of presenting them if you leave your beliefs at the door.

    Teacher   Jobs   Teaching  
    Interview with Stephen Schenkenberg, www.believermag.com. November, 2005.
  • Of course there is enough to stir our wonder anywhere; there's enough to love, anywhere, if one is strong enough, if one is diligent enough, if one is perceptive, patient, kind enough -- whatever it takes.

    Strong   Patient   Kind  
    William H. Gass (1968). “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country & Other Stories”, p.192, David R. Godine Publisher
  • So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them

    William H. Gass (2014). “On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry”, p.89, New York Review of Books
  • The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

    Book   Tails   Gone  
    "Habitations of the Word: Essays". Book by William H. Gass, www.nytimes.com. 1984.
  • Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

    Blue   Color   Interiors  
    William H. Gass (2014). “On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry”, p.75, New York Review of Books
  • If death itself were to die, would it have a ghost, and would the ghost of death visit the dead in the guise of someone alive, if only to fright them from any temptation to return?

    William H. Gass (2010). “A Temple of Texts”, p.346, Knopf Group E-Books
  • When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid.

    Stupid   Book   Brows  
  • I usually have poor to absent relations with editors because they have a habit of desiring changes and I resist changes.

    Writing   Editors   Habit  
    William H. Gass, Theodore G. Ammon (2003). “Conversations with William H. Gass”, p.38, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • 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.

  • And I am in retirement from love.

    William H. Gass (2014). “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: And Other Stories”, p.128, New York Review of Books
  • I am firmly of the opinion that people who can’t speak have nothing to say. It’s one more thing we do to the poor, the deprived: cut out their tongues … allow them a language as lousy as their life

    Cutting   People   Tongue  
    William H. Gass (2014). “On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry”, p.25, New York Review of Books
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 63 quotes from the Novelist William H. Gass, starting from July 30, 1924! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
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