If I didn’t feel that I was doing something or trying to do something for others, then I would have very little excuse for the life that I lead. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
Whenever we have an opportunity to engage with each other as human beings and to minimize the differences between us based on disparity in resources, then we should do it. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
Whenever I travel to a poor country, I try to help at least one person. Usually, that person helps me just as much – I can find a local poor person to be my guide or my interpreter. That person makes money from me, I make money from him or her, we both learn about each other. It’s an equal win-win relationship. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
My father grew up in an era when to be an American – a white American, at least – was to be yourself. In some respects, his generation was more ignorant, complacent, self-centered and parochial than mine. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
So far, I’ve never missed a deadline for a term paper, a review, a manuscript. I perform the mumbo-jumbo of voting with belief in my heart, I’ve not yet won even a jaywalking ticket, and unlike my father, whom I fault in this respect, I refrain from opting out of jury duty; instead, they mostly kick me out. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
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. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
In the nineteenth century, we beat the British more than once,’ Afghans often told me. ‘In the twentieth century, we beat the Russians. In the twenty-first, if we have to, we’ll beat the Americans!’ William T. Vollmann Read Quote
The case of Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union is the clearest case of good against evil that I’ve seen in my lifetime. I thought it was terrific the way they got their country back. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
If I’m writing a book, and I’m warned, ‘Oh, this is unsaleable, you need to make it shorter,’ or, ‘It has to be this, or that,’ I’m proud to say I don’t pay attention. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
As large publishers turn into monopolies, and the MBAs who are running them – maybe editors used to run them before – are steadily tightening the screws, they feel more and more that they get to call the shots. William T. Vollmann Read Quote
