You could imagine writing about a prostitute, for instance, but if you haven't spent time with prostitutes then you're going to get all these details wrong. But if you have a lot of sex with prostitutes and you're friends with prostitutes and you interview prostitutes, then maybe after many, many years you might be able to create prostitute characters.
William T. VollmannThere are parts of L.A. that feel very, very Mexican, and there are weird little enclaves of Northside in Mexico - Cancรบn for instance. So what is a border?
William T. VollmannAre you a censor? Do you tell people not to say โgirlโ? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, youโre a saint or youโre psychotic. If a few things offend you, deal with them--fairly. If youโre often offended by things, youโre probably a self-righteous asshole and itโs too bad you werenโt censored yourself--by your mother in an abortion clinic.
William T. VollmannI think that we're all, as human beings, so limited. If we want to write about ourselves, that's fairly easy. And if we write about our friends or our families, we can do that. But if we want to project ourselves somewhere beyond our personal experience we're going to fail unless we get that experience or we borrow it from others.
William T. VollmannSome friends and I, we went right up there behind the studio and we got on a train, we could tell it was going to go to Roseville. We got off it and got on another train. And we got to Roseville, and it takes hours to get through that yard. It's really big. So we ended up just coming back here. It's like fishing or hunting. You can't always come back with something.
William T. VollmannMy 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. VollmannI want to fall in love with beautiful women of all races. Rescue somebody every now and then, improve my painting, and improve my sentence structure. If I can make a living doing that stuff, that's great, and I will keep doing it, and they can do whatever they want with my image. I couldn't care less.
William T. Vollmann