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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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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
Slow
Odd
Speeding
Activity
Activities
Butchers
Reader
Comment
Seal
Perhaps
Crowd
Seals
Reading
Notice
Gathered
Like
Images
Aims
Flier
Crowds
Wedding
Gossips
Aim
Gossip
Butcher

More quotes by William H. Gass

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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
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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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[As] authorities over us are removed, as we wobble out on our own, the question of whether to be or not to be arises with real relevance for the first time, since the burden of being is felt most fully by the self-determining self.
William H. Gass
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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.
William H. Gass
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And I am in retirement from love.
William H. Gass
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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.
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] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.
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
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As Rilke observed, love requires a progressive shortening of the senses: I can see you for miles I can hear you for blocks, I can smell you, maybe, for a few feet, but I can only touch on contact, taste as I devour
William H. Gass
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I publish a piece in order to kill it, so that I won't have to fool around with it any longer.
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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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
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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.
William H. Gass
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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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Literature is composed of quarter truths, and the quarters are often spent on penny candy.
William H. Gass
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What else is soul but a listener?
William H. Gass
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Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.
William H. Gass
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Getting even is one reason for writing.
William H. Gass
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The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.
William H. Gass