William H. Gass Quotes

You can be zany and funny or you can do something that really has some depth to it and serious, so there's many different colors to paint with. I would hate to get trapped in one little thing. I always feel like funny is an appendage, but it is not my whole body.

Comedy is the ultimate truth. Jazz is hitting the notes that that no one else would hit, and comedy is saying words that no one else would say.

I try to acknowledge both the sacred and the silly in my work. That goes for the live show as well. If I find myself in my head or dwelling in seriousness, I think of my friends back home and how they'd be laughing at me.

You can't really copy what I do because I don't do anything.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

I'd rather call myself a mischief-maker, an imp, rather than a satirist. Satirist sounds so self important. Plus no one is calling himself an imp right now. It makes me feel special.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

A scientist worthy of a lab coat should be able to make original discoveries while wearing a clown suit, or give a lecture in a high squeaky voice from inhaling helium. It is written nowhere in the math of probability theory that one may have no fun.

Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

If you can get humor and seriousness at the same time, you've created a special little thing, and that's what I'm looking for, because if you get pompous, you lose everything.

I'm a real paradox. Because I'm a very serious person, and I take my work very seriously. But I wrap it up in a court jester and a clown and make people laugh and make them feel good about themselves.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

If you can't plagiarise yourself, who can you plagiarise?

I think I'm genuinely sincere, and that's what hopefully makes it work. I take that very seriously when I'm writing.

The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else; it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.

I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.

I don't see what's so good about being genuine. Clog dancing is genuine. Isn't being fake more of an achievement? At least it takes some inspiration. Like, sherbet dips, they're a special food. Think of all the additives and coloring and grinding that it takes to create a sherbet dip. But carrots? They're just out there, shrieking, "Hi, we're some carrots! Love us for it!" They never have to prove themselves.

I am never usually taking myself too seriously and I think that people when they read stuff from me, they have to realise that I'm having fun.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

It's easy to get anonymous people to hate you. Have an opinion. Be creative. Be yourself.

A person's creative ability decreases in direct proportion to the degree to which he takes himself seriously.