William T. Vollmann Quotes

Every story I do is about people. It's my survival instinct - one person, one story.

Everybody's got stories. I don't want to not have stories.

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that.

Every person you meet has a story.

You can't tell someone they are wrong about their own life.

Reporters have to use their imagination, really put themselves in the shoes of the person they want to interview.

I'd say most of my songs I write from personal experience. When I feel like I don't have any inspiration in my personal life, I think about others that are close to me and maybe what they're going through or even just people I've come across, acquaintances.

I'm not a natural storyteller at all. If anything, I'm a natural interviewer, a natural listener, but I'm not a natural storyteller.

I guess, as a reporter, I always thought that my biggest strength was that I could get anybody to talk to me. I wasn't the best writer, but I could get people to talk to me.

It's great to express yourself and tell other people's stories and get into the minds of people who aren't like you.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

I just think self-satisfied people ignore certain signs about other people.

Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.

When you talk, you only talk about something that you already know. But when you listen, you can learn something you don’t know.

One of the lessons I think nearly all women need to learn, is, that when we are dealing with busy people, no matter how much interested we may be in a subject, we must put what we have to say in the briefest possible form. This is even more important if the person to whom we are talking is listening because of our interest and not because of his own. We may be able to impart some of our enthusiasm to him, if we do not first bore him to death and make him impatient because he is being asked to listen to too many words.

Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.

Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them.

I am and always have been fascinated with people, and I have a very good time coming up with the narratives of people's lives, exploring how a person thinks and feels.

Writing is weaponized empathy. It's putting yourself in someone else's head. It's finding what's in them that relates to you.

I don't believe people are interested in dates and facts. I don't think it is interesting to say what it is to be this person or that, but I do believe it is entertaining and perhaps even of value to express how it is to be that person.

A lot of times, I have personal things, things I go through that I may exaggerate or make a story around, but it always has a meaning related to something I've been through for real.

I began seeing certain things happen in my life and other people's lives and getting inspired by it and writing about it. And that's where you get 'Happy Birthday' from and 'Ross Capicchioni' from or you even get 'I'm Sorry' from.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever - I rap about it.

I take inspiration from my own experiences and from other people's experiences.

I try to speak from a place of understanding and most times I'm speaking from a place of experience.