William H. Gass Book Quotations

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

The world of conceptualized ideas is quite wonderful, even when it's - like Aristotle's Physics - an outmoded book. The physics is not true. But the reasoning is dazzling.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid.

I don't know myself, what to do, where to go... I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort... it's what the world offers... please leave me alone to dream as I fancy.

If you were a fully realized person-whatever the hell that would be-you wouldn't fool around writing books.