I am firmly of the opinion that people who canโt speak have nothing to say. Itโs one more thing we do to the poor, the deprived: cut out their tongues โฆ allow them a language as lousy as their life
William H. GassI hate ideologies of all kinds, so I avoid jargon. I've done enough philosophy to know that some specialized terms are really needed. I don't complain when Kant does it. Or when Aristotle introduces all kinds of new words; he needed them. But these other people [modern philosophers] are just obfuscating. It just makes me annoyed.
William H. GassWorks of art are meant to be lived with and loved, and if we try to understand them, we should try to understand them as we try to understand anyone โ in order to know them better, not in order to know something else.
William H. GassFreud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house
William H. Gass