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It art can only succeed through the cooperating imagination and intelligence of its consumers, who fill out, for themselves, the artist's world and make it round, and whose own special genius partly determine the ultimate glory of it.

William H. Gass

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William H. Gass
Age: 93 †
Born: 1924
Born: July 30
Died: 2017
Died: December 6
Critic
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Military Officer
Novelist
Prosaist
University Teacher
Writer
Fargo
North Dakota
William Howard Gass
Glory
Empathy
Make
Succeed
Consumers
World
Whose
Fill
Round
Genius
Rounds
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Determine
Cooperating
Imagination
Intelligence
Apathy
Artist
Ultimate
Partly
Art

More quotes by William H. Gass

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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?
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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
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We converse as we live by repeating, by combining and recombining a few elements over and over again just as nature does when of elementary particles it builds a world.
William H. Gass
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The true alchemists do not change lead into gold they change the world into words.
William H. Gass
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It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word
William H. Gass
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When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid.
William H. Gass
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Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things.
William H. Gass
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I hate ideologies of all kinds, so I avoid jargon. I've done enough philosophy to know that some specialized terms are really needed. I don't complain when Kant does it. Or when Aristotle introduces all kinds of new words he needed them. But these other people [modern philosophers] are just obfuscating. It just makes me annoyed.
William H. Gass
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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.
William H. Gass
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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
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Literature is composed of quarter truths, and the quarters are often spent on penny candy.
William H. Gass
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If there were genders to genres, fiction would be unquestionably feminine.
William H. Gass
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Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal
William H. Gass
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The body of Our Saviour shat but Our Saviour shat not.
William H. Gass
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Getting even is one reason for writing.
William H. Gass
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My face is muffled in my mother's clothing. Her rhinestones injure me. See: my feet are going. Fish flee the forefinger of my aunt. The sun streams over the geraniums. What has this to do with what I feel, with what I am.
William H. Gass
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What else is soul but a listener?
William H. Gass
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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
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If you were a fully realized person-whatever the hell that would be-you wouldn't fool around writing books.
William H. Gass
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I usually have poor to absent relations with editors because they have a habit of desiring changes and I resist changes.
William H. Gass