William T. Vollmann Quotes

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

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Quotes to Explore

• 'Skins' is about a group of teenagers in Bristol, and it's all about what they get up to and all the different things they do. I think it's a good show because it's come from a very real place, and there's a lot of young people involved in the writing.

  

  Hannah Murray
  • People
  • Up
  • Good

• Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.

  

  Barry Ritholtz
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Real

• I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.

  

  Randy Newman
  • Writing
  • Truth
  • Yourself

• Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.

  

  Victor LaValle
  • Writing
  • Being
  • Try

• I can be collaborative, for instance, in situations where I go and study the artist's work before I start writing. Then I can at least try to write towards their style.

  

  Warren Ellis
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Style

• Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.

  

  Pamela Sargent
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Science

• When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • World
  • Writing
  • Girl

• There are no rules to writing a song.

  

  Randy Castillo Mötley Crüe
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Rules

• It takes me a long time to write, and I trust myself, so I write very sparsely, so when I do, I know it's good, you know what I mean? Rather than writing a whole bunch and having to sort out what's good and what's not.

  

  Thebe Neruda Kgositsile
  • Time
  • Good
  • Long

• 'Seize the Story' takes readers all the way through the process of writing fiction, from beginning to end. Every element, from dialogue to setting, plotting to character creation, is laid out and illustrated with examples. But the tone of the book is not that of a dry writing manual - it's definitely written for teenagers.

  

  Victoria Hanley
  • Writing
  • Character
  • Book

• Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.

  

  M. Night Shyamalan
  • Writing
  • Money
  • Art

• Writing is a creative process, and you need to have the doors and windows of your mind open so that you have the possibility of change.

  

  Hakan Nesser
  • Writing
  • Mind
  • Change

• I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.

  

  Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Book

• After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

  

  Ornette Coleman
  • Up
  • Time
  • Writing

• R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele - you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music - it's clear in her writing that that's where it comes from.

  

  Babyface
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Soul

• I always joke that my kids' favorite holiday is Father's Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It's my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

  

  Wayne Dyer
  • Great
  • Writing
  • Love

• I try to be very honest in my writing. It's amazing, though, to think that people are responding to what we do, but it's okay if they're responding in a positive way too, because I think just creating anything at all to put out there is a gift.

  

  Tavi Gevinson
  • People
  • Writing
  • Amazing

• On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Reading

• The fascination for me writing about crime in Berlin was the idea that there was this much bigger crime taking place in the background, a fantastically epochal moment in history which is just going on. That just sort of makes the whole thing have a greater resonance.

  

  Philip Kerr
  • Writing
  • History

• I love writing in compressed time periods because the act of survival in the midst of panic and fear, that's where true heroism comes. If you have a uniform, and you're expected to do things, it's a sort of incremental heroism.

  

  Peter Landesman
  • Time
  • Writing
  • True

• One problem with writing on the computer, as I do, is that the page is never really 'blank." It is backed by all this energy or potential energy...one can always check the New York Times, or look at real estate, or investigate some intriguing new person in one's life. The span and space for writing feels like a tunnel under these massive mountains of information.

  

  Dan Chiasson
  • Writing
  • Real
  • Energy

• When you're dealing with serious subjects, there is a pressure to be absolutely sure that you know what you're doing.

  

  John Oliver
  • Serious

• Punk is like looking at a mirror. I already have a mirror so I don't need the Offspring to remind me how gorgeous I am.

  

  John Joseph Lydon
  • Mirror

• 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
  • Writing
  • Craving
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