Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.

- 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; mos…

- 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 off…

- William T. Vollmann

Oh, ants, my sisters, good old honeydew-seekers! From close up you are sticky and shiny and gristly; and your nymphs have parasitic red mites stuck t…

- William T. Vollmann

Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible.

- 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 w…

- 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 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.…

- William T. Vollmann

I studied Comparative Literature at Cornell. Structuralism was real big then. The idea of reading and writing as being this language game. There's a …

- William T. Vollmann