If you were a fully realized person-whatever the hell that would be-you wouldn't fool around writing books. William H. Gass More Quotes by William H. Gass More Quotes From William H. Gass 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 William H. Gass tonguecuttingpeople The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it. William H. Gass movementexpressionwriting Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal William H. Gass visualsbecomingfiction For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex. William H. Gass eyecountrysex 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. William H. Gass dreambooklying We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take them with utter sober seriousness, the utter sober seriousness of right-wing parsons and political saviors, the owners of Pomeranians, are the liars who want to be believed, the novelists and poets, who know that the creatures they imagine have no other being than the sounding syllables which the reader will speak into his own weary and distracted head. There are no magic words. To say the words is magical enough. William H. Gass liarswingsmean Knowing has two poles, and they are always poles apart: carnal knowing, the laying on of hands, the hanging of the fact by head or heels, the measurement of mass and motion, the calibration of brutal blows, the counting of supplies; and spiritual knowing, invisibly felt by the inside self, who is but a fought-over field of distraction, a stage where we recite the monotonous monologue that is our life, a knowing governed by internal tides, by intimations, motives, resolutions, by temptations, secrecy, shame, and pride. William H. Gass pridespiritualknowledge And I am in retirement from love. William H. Gass retirement 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 giving-upplatowriting Some people say their life is full of darkness and I wonder why they don't just try and switch the lights on. William H. Gass lightdarknesspeople The word itself has another color. It’s not a word with any resonance, although the e was once pronounced. There is only the bump now between b and l, the relief at the end, the whew. It hasn’t the sly turn which crimson takes halfway through, yellow’s deceptive jelly, or the rolled-down sound in brown. It hasn’t violet’s rapid sexual shudder or like a rough road the irregularity of ultramarine, the low puddle in mauve like a pancake covered in cream, the disapproving purse to pink, the assertive brevity of red, the whine of green. William H. Gass greencoloryellow 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. William H. Gass fogillinoiscountry I should like to suggest that at least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story of a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken's wing. William H. Gass storiesfaceswings When reviewers take the trouble to compliment a writer on her style, it is usually because she has made it easy for them to slide from one sentence to another like an otter down a slope. William H. Gass ottersslidesstyle Literature is composed of quarter truths, and the quarters are often spent on penny candy. William H. Gass craftspenniesliterature Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things. William H. Gass supremeobjectsmind One may decide that the nipple most nearly resembles a newly ripened raspberry (never, be it noted, the plonk of water on a pond at the commencement of a drizzle, a simple bladder nozzle built on the suction principal gum bubble, mole, or birth ward, bumpy metal button, or the painful red eruption of a swelling), but does one care to see his breakfast fruit as a sweetened milky bowl of snipped nips? no. William H. Gass eruptionsimplewater The body of Our Saviour shat but Our Saviour shat not. William H. Gass saviourbody Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. William H. Gass interiorscolorblue 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. William H. Gass gonetailsbook
