William H. Gass

"I wonder how many men and women, kids and dogs, go through life in a state of modest misery; how much communal coldness there is, how much extinguished hope."

"O, Koh, the limerick is the unrefiner's fire. It is as false and lifeless, as anonymous, as a rubber snake, a Dixie cup. It is indeed the dildo of desire! No one ever found a thought in one. No one ev…"

"A long review of The Tunnel in Arizona Quarterly, 48.1"

"But if you want to think about something really funny, consider how the titles of tyrants change. We shall suffer no more Emperors, Kings, Czars, Shahs, or Caesars, to lop off our limbs and burn our h…"

"My illness is alive, the threats to my life are real; yet it is only my death I feel, only the lessening made by my own loss. I am gone, Kohler, right now; and who is so dead as one so dead to a momen…"

"The devil does not sign contracts with just anyone. Upon the tens of millions, no judgment is pronounced. For them there is death, of course, but no doom. The trouble with history is its incorrigible …"

"So city a man he seldom freed his feet to feel the country."

"So she drank to the point of suicide, because a life which not only lacked love, but couldn't even catch a little indifference, like a net to contain air, was intolerable; because she hadn't a single …"