Author: William Vollmann

Cites

• D.D Shostakovich (1)
  • IN: Europe Central (2005) Historical Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
    FROM: Testimony: The Memoirs, (1979), Book, Russia
• Field-Marshal Erich von Manstein (1)
  • IN: Europe Central (2005) Historical Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: As often as not, the things that attract us to another person are quite trivial, and what always delighted me about Blumentritt was his fanatical attachment to the telephone.
    FROM: Lost Victories, (1958), Book, Germany
• G. W. Leibniz (1)
  • IN: Butterfly Stories (1993) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The consequences beasts draw are just like those of simple empirics, who claim that what has happened will happen again in a case [that] strikes them [as] similar, without being able to determine whether the same reasons are at work. This is what makes it so easy to capture beasts. .
    FROM: Preface to The New Essays, (1765), Book, Germany
• Hatji Makso Despic (1)
  • IN: Last Stories and Other Stories (2014) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: It is the custom for the barber to shave the deceased, to powder him, whiten his face and rouge his cheeks and lips, and dress him in a frock coat with patent leather shoes and black trousers, as if going to a ball, may God forbid — this shall not happen to Makso.
    FROM: Testament of Hatji Makso Despic, drawn up in Sarajevo, 29 March 1921, (1921), Conversation, NULL
• Francis Bacon (1)
  • IN: The Royal Family (2000) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: It would be madness and inconsistency to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.
    FROM: Novum Organum (1620) Book I, paragraph VI, (1620), Book, UK
• Wittgenstein (1)
  • IN: An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World (1992) Autobiography, American
    EPIGRAPH: And I have admitted that the foreigner will probably pronounce a sentence differently if he conceives it differently; but what we call his wrong conception need not lie in anything that accompanies the utterance…
    FROM: Philosophical Investigations, I.20, (1953), Book, Austria
• Prince Yuhara (1)
  • IN: Kissing the Mask (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: What am I to do with you, semblance of the laurel in the moon, you whom I see but cannot touch?
    FROM: poem to a young woman, middle Nara era, (794), Poem, Japan
• Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde) (1)
  • IN: Kissing the Mask (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Dresses make the lady, if one has the figure.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, Germany
• Zeami Motokiyo (1)
  • IN: Kissing the Mask (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: A woman never imitates herself.
    FROM: NULL, (1428), NULL, Japan