List of William H. Gass Quotes

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 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.

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.

I Cannot Walk Under The Wires. The Sparrows Scatter Like Handfuls Of Gravel. Really, Wires Are Voices In Thin Strips. They Are Words Wound In Cables. Bars Of Connection.

In General, I Would Think That At Present Prose Writers Are Much In Advance Of The Poets. In The Old Days, I Read More Poetry Than Prose, But Now It Is In Prose Where You Find Things Being Put Together Well, Where There Is Great Ambition, And Equal Talent. Poets Have Gotten So Careless, It Is A Disgrace. You Can’t Pick Up A Page. All The Words Slide Off.

The World Of Conceptualized Ideas Is Quite Wonderful, Even When It's - Like Aristotle's Physics - An Outmoded Book. The Physics Is Not True. But The Reasoning Is Dazzling.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Usually Have Poor To Absent Relations With Editors Because They Have A Habit Of Desiring Changes And I Resist Changes.