“What’s precious about somebody like Bill Vollmann is that, even though there’s a great deal of formal innovation in his fictions, it rarely seems to exist for just its own sake. It’s almost always deployed to make some point (Vollmann’s the most editorial young novelist going right now, and he’s great at using formal ingenuity to make the editorializing a component of his narrative instead of an interruption) or to create an effect that’s internal to the text. His narrator’s always weirdly effaced, the writing unself-conscious, despite all the "By-the-way-Dear-reader" intrusions. In a way it’s sad that Vollmann’s integrity is so remarkable. Its remarkability means it’s rare”

“I feel stupidly flustered right now. “Okay, well, he’s still just like – and then there’s his friggin’ eyelashes—”“You noticed his eyelashes?” Amber asks, like it’s weird to do.It is, I realize with a horrible sinking feeling. It’s weird to notice somebody’s eyelashes.”

“Recursive metafiction worships the narrative consciousness, makes “it” the subject of the text. Minimalism’s even worse, emptier, because it’s a fraud: it eschews not only self-reference but any narrative personality at all, tries to pretend there “is” no narrative consciousness in its text. This is so fucking American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.-Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993)”

“The idea that making an activity legal would reduce its incidence is preposterous. This is exactly like the Clintonian statement about wanting to make abortion 'safe, legal and rare.' The most effective way to make something 'rare' is to make it illegal.”

“People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.”

“The way he was talking to me earlier… makes me think he’s starting to feel like God’s the cosmic sadist again and he’s the marionette.”“In other words, God’s just torturing him for the kick?”Thomas sighed and set his mostly untouched plate down. “Something like that.”“That’s not a healthy outlook.”“He doesn’t feel loved right now, so it’s the natural one.”