William T. Vollmann Quotes

It may be tripe, but it's my tripe - and I do urge other authors to resist encroachments on their brain-children and trust their own judgment rather than that of some zealous meddler with a diploma in creative punctuation who is just dying to get into the act.

Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I would, now it is their turn.

I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works - I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of the work, the attribution, that kind of stuff.

Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

I get hit up all the time from every verified rapper with 1,000,000 followers like, 'Yo bro! You got the sauce right now. Send me beats!' Naw, that takes everything away from what I do.

In the end, for me, music is such an internal thing that to let the outside world influence would be against my modus operandi.

As I was writing 'Insidious 3' I started to fall in love with the characters and the story. I became very possessive of it and I didn't want someone else to do it.

Publishing is a business. It's about squeezing every last dollar out of every available source, and the most vulnerable source is the author. No clearer proof of that exists than the 'standard' book contract.

I am very choosy about my films. I don't do a film just for the sake of money.

I don't want to make a 100 hundred million dollar movie I have no stake in.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that once we make a thing and release it, my turn to talk is done. Ideally, you're saying everything you want to say in the product you're making, and you don't have to add commentary to it afterwards.

Only I hold the right to all my songs.

It's important for me that anything I lend my stamp to must have a perspective that is uniquely mine.

I don't let the fans rule my world and rule what I do, or how I do it, because as artists we give what we give and you receive how you want to receive.

I don't think I'm the best screenwriter in the world. It's just important to me to write my movies so I'm personally invested in them.

It's one thing if you write a song and somebody else sings it because you give the OK. But if your voice is on something and you don't get the credit, it's kind of hard.

If someone wants to be very tight about authenticity or ownership, it just sounds kind of competitive to me.

There's a difference between making the music for a check vs. what you think you should be doing artistically and creatively.

We wrote 'Stellify' for Rihanna, but as we got to the end of writing it, I thought, 'You know what? I'm gonna keep this for myself. We'll give her another one.' She'd have probably sung it better, but it is too good for me not to do it.

I am not adding more films to my kitty just for the sake of money; I choose my script and do it.

Not to take anything away from artists who don't write their own songs, but it's always been important to me to make sure it's my story.

There's no writers room, or any other writer involved. I write everything from beginning to end. Maybe it's just me not being able to let go of something, especially with 'Peaky.'

My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job as far as I can see is to do the music that I want to do. All those other things are completely out of my control.

As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away. I have no "intellectual property," and I think that all claimants to such property are theives.