William T. Vollmann Quotes

Sir, then they’re just going to have to die.

Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it's a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

Nuclear arms kill many people all at once, but other weapons kill many people, little by little, every day, everywhere in the world.

Under each formula lies a corpse.

War is a generality, so are the inevitabilities of war, including death.

We do not ask to be born; and we do not ask to die. But born we are and die we must. We come into existence and we pass out of existence. And in neither case does high-handed fate await our ratification of its decree.

To most the end comes as naturally and simply as sleep.

I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all - or am I?

It must be understood that, as adults, we are all terminal.

Yes, war is hell. It is awful. It involves human beings killing other human beings, sometimes innocent civilians. That is why we despise war.

My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.

Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.

There ain't nothin' to dyin', really. You just get tired. You kind of drift away.

Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killing yet.

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

It is natural to die as to be born.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

War is death’s holy-day.

You give us the mission, we can get ‘em. We’ll rout ’em out. When we’re through with them, they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.

All us got a due date. All us got a death sentence. One day, we gonna die.