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[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, Write about what you know. I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.
William T. Vollmann
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William T. Vollmann
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: July 28
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Short Story Writer
War Correspondent
Writer
LA
California
Work
Always
Think
Thinking
Ernest
Hemingway
Takes
Write
Writing
More quotes by William T. Vollmann
I decided that there is really some sort of entity that I call Imperial, and I decided to extend it all the way along the California-Mexico border and into Tijuana and then to the Pacific because it all has a similar feeling.
William T. Vollmann
So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty more pleasurable still is rereading that book most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk.
William T. Vollmann
At least I hope - that the fiction I've written so far has flaws but has mostly been successful.
William T. Vollmann
There are parts of L.A. that feel very, very Mexican, and there are weird little enclaves of Northside in Mexico - Cancún for instance. So what is a border?
William T. Vollmann
My father grew up in an era when to be an American - a white American, at least - was to be yourself. In some respects, his generation was more ignorant, complacent, self-centered and parochial than mine.
William T. Vollmann
Are you a censor? Do you tell people not to say “girl”? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, you’re a saint or you’re psychotic. If a few things offend you, deal with them--fairly. If you’re often offended by things, you’re probably a self-righteous asshole and it’s too bad you weren’t censored yourself--by your mother in an abortion clinic.
William T. Vollmann
We're living in what used to be Mexico, and there's this very fluid border feeling. You go a little bit south of Tijuana, for instance, into Ensenada, and it still seems kind of borderlike. And you go much farther, suddenly the prices are lower, the prostitution is different, the commerce is different, everything feels more Mexican.
William T. Vollmann
There will come a time when nobody reads my books and no one remembers who I was. And in the meantime, I'll do it my way.
William T. Vollmann
When I go train hopping and I look up into the sky, there are always so many more stars than I remember there were.
William T. Vollmann
Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.
William T. Vollmann
The instant people specialize, its in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon.
William T. Vollmann
Can you understand your own dreams, which arise with mushrooms' rank richness in the night-forests within your skull?
William T. Vollmann
I feel like I'm almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don't think I know quite enough to do it right.
William T. Vollmann
Whereas if I want to create a prostitute character now from memories of different prostitutes and inventing stuff, I can say, this could happen, this is quite plausible. But I don't feel I know enough about border life to do the latter.
William T. Vollmann
If this advertisement be not sufficient, I can only protrude my wormlike tendrils of apology, craving forbearance on the grounds that a writer must write about what he knows, and since I know nothing about any subject it scarcely matters where I dabble.
William T. Vollmann
Maybe life is a process of trading hopes for memories.
William T. Vollmann
Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible.
William T. Vollmann
Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.
William T. Vollmann
I want to fall in love with beautiful women of all races. Rescue somebody every now and then, improve my painting, and improve my sentence structure. If I can make a living doing that stuff, that's great, and I will keep doing it, and they can do whatever they want with my image. I couldn't care less.
William T. Vollmann
I think that we're all, as human beings, so limited. If we want to write about ourselves, that's fairly easy. And if we write about our friends or our families, we can do that. But if we want to project ourselves somewhere beyond our personal experience we're going to fail unless we get that experience or we borrow it from others.
William T. Vollmann
