William H. Gass

Novelist

1924-07-30

Books by William H. Gass

The Tunnel
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Omensetter's Luck
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In the heart of the heart of the country & other stories
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Quotes by William H. Gass

Some screw for science only in the afternoon, while others keep their faith with evening— here Orcutt chuckled— it's a matter of light, I understand, but which makes which I can't remember.
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It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play — the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and purpose of life — its facility, its use.
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So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there's one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them
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Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal
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I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.
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It's not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word
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For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.
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Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house
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It's not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word
Read quote
Some screw for science only in the afternoon, while others keep their faith with evening— here Orcutt chuckled— it's a matter of light, I understand, but which makes which I can't remember.
Read quote
I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.
Read quote
For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.
Read quote
Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal
Read quote
So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there's one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them
Read quote
Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house
Read quote
It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play — the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and purpose of life — its facility, its use.
Read quote
For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.
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