Home > Author > William T. Vollmann
181 " (When I read this over, the pallidity of my descriptions appalls me, as if I had failed to make what I saw “real” enough. "
― William T. Vollmann , Riding Toward Everywhere
182 " (When I read this over, the pallidity of my descriptions appalls me, as if I had failed to make what I saw “real” enough. This must be the product of my velocity, which prevented me from seeing more than the things themselves. "
183 " The train kept travelling southward at about the same speed as a running man, "
184 " It is a fine luxury to trust oneself to a friend’s strengths and help him in his weaknesses, all without negotiations or resentments. "
185 " Steve caught another trout the morning we left. He always let them go. I stood here wondering if I had reached Cold Mountain. Where is Cold Mountain, anyway? Isn’t it for the best if I can never be sure I’ve found it? Thoreau one last time: How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? "
186 " As I get older, I find myself getting angrier and angrier. Doubtless change itself, not to mention physical decline and inevitable petty tragedies of disappointed expectations, would have made for resentment in any event; but I used to be a passive schoolboy, my negative impulses turned obediently inward. Now I gaze around this increasingly un-American America of mine, and I rage. "
187 " A squat black telephone, I mean an octopus, the god of our Signal Corps, owns a recess in Berlin (more probably Moscow, which one German general has named the core of the enemy's whole being). "
― William T. Vollmann , Europe Central
188 " It may well be that I am a sullen and truculent citizen; possibly I should play the game a trifle. "
189 " They were so close now that their various yellow probes of wrist-light puddled around them and caught the grass around my elbows. They were islands of authority in the night, with immense theoretical power over us, but, like us, they were small and alone; the night was huger than any of us. And we were more a part of the night than they. "
190 " They were so close now that their various yellow probes of wrist-light puddled around them and caught the grass around my elbows. They were islands of authority in the night, with immense theoretical power over us, but, like us, they were small and alone; the night was huger than any of us. And we were more a part of the night than they. This was their property, their station, and we were trespassing on it but they could not see us. When they turned and went back indoors, I felt almost as if I could fly. "
191 " My critique of American society remains fundamentally incoherent. Would I really have preferred my grandfather’s time, when Pinkertons were cracking Wobblies over the head, or my father’s, when Joe McCarthy could ruin anyone by calling him Red? All I know is that although I live a freer life than many people, I want to be freer still; I’m sometimes positively dazzled with longing for a better way of being. What is it that I need? "
192 " When I hitchhike, I experience the same feeling. And I wonder whether life can be good without the hard times. "
193 " ...he sometimes thought that they had achieved a perfect understanding. Gudrid knew this, and took pleasure in it. But she could not let it stand in the way of her plans. "
― William T. Vollmann , The Ice-Shirt (Seven Dreams #1)
194 " Our invisibility consisted of this: We were just two filthy men sitting in weeds and darkness. And "
195 " That was the journey I truly believed I could make, the journey into the past. "
196 " After the final train hop in this book I finally began to read a present from my friend Paul, the reissue of Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, and found it dedicated to a certain Han Shan. Turning to page one, I read: Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon… By page fourteen, Kerouac was already going into raptures about Han Shan, who happened to dwell and write poems in a wall-less house called Cold Mountain. By page twenty-five he was off for Mount Matterhorn. Well, I’ve been there, too. "
197 " Every time I surrender, even necessarily, to authority which disregardingly or contemptuously violates me, so I violate myself. Every time I break an unnecessary law, doing so for my own joy and to the detriment of no other human being, so I regain myself, and become strong in the parts of me that the security man can never see. "
198 " Dark and lovely tree-shadows raced across the long white gallery, and the shadows of my two comrades continually glided toward me, getting devoured by the pursuing shadow of the door-frame. Then all of the sudden, red signal-luminescence rushed into the boxcar and flushed us with the blood of the entire world! "
199 " ...he was a happy man — the more so because he belonged to a Nation intelligent enough to build a brewery and a cheese-factory in this wilderness, first thing. "
― William T. Vollmann , Fathers and Crows
200 " have never looked down on any traveller, although I have pitied many and disliked a few; I wish them happier journeys to death than mine, for, after all, their happiness cannot diminish what belongs to me. "