William T. Vollmann Quotes

The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever-new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing.

It is a silly question to ask a prostitute why she does it ... These are the highest-paid 'professional' women in America.

When you prostitute yourself, you have to get paid for it.

I'm rather pro-prostitution, I admire people who do it. It can't be much fun. Thank goodness for it. People need relief or they become murderers.

I do crazy amounts of research. I want this stuff to 'work,' so to speak. I need to be, at least to me, believable - because if I feel - if I cannot invest some element of verisimilitude, the reader is absolutely not going to buy in.

What am I a prostitute? Am I your prostitute? You can't prostitute me.

Don't write about that which you don't know.

Adrian: I find prostitutes vastly important. Nathan Ivashkov: Well. How refreshing to see that things haven’t changed.

I find prostitutes vastly important.

Prostitutes don't sell their bodies, they rent their bodies. Housewives sell their bodies when they get married.

If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?

I believe in research you cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what's real.

I think that's because believable action is based on authenticity, and accuracy is very important to me. I always spend time researching my novels, exploring the customs and attitudes of the county I'm using for their setting.

I never write about a place I don't know.

If you want to write about people, you can make it up. But if you spend time talking to someone and examining what it is you want to write about, you discover a level of detail that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.

I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.

Anything in which you're playing someone real does make you feel responsible for making the story as true as it can be.

I think pimp, therefore i am.

I've had six or eight hookers in my life. I never woke up the next day thinking man I'm glad I got a hooker last night.

Taking a call girl to an STD fair... there's a joke here.

I'm not a sexy guy. I went to a hooker. I dropped my pants. She dropped her price.

I've always been fascinated with the idea of people paying for sex and what goes on with that and why that happens.