Mo Williams: Some people peddle apples, lamb chops, lumber. I peddle information. Skip ain't sorry; he understands. We live in a d...ifferent kind of world. Oh, once in a while he gets a little hot under the collar if I sell him short. Candy: But you wouldn't sell him to a Commie! Mo Williams: What do you think I am, an informer?!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Williams. I pray you, what thinks he of our estate? King Henry. Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be... washed off the next tide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever else it may be--stimulus, tranquilizer, aural nipple, too of executives, Muzak is basically trivializing. It is not simpl...y that it relegates music to the province of wallpaper. Background music never need be banal. When it is used in support of drama, it can greatly enhance without harming itself. Mozart was entirely amenable to such films as Elvira Madigan and The French Lieutenant's Woman; Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote aptly for The Invaders, Arnold Bax for Oliver Twist, Sergei Prokofiev for Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky, Dmitri Shostakovich for others. In such uses, music collaborates with artists, it becomes an art among arts. But Muzak collaborates chiefly with management: it is used as an aural smoke-screen, a form of jamming, a hormone in the henhouse, an emollient in cemeteries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look at this poet William Carlos Williams: he is primitive and native, and his roots are in raw forest and violent places; he is w...ord-sick and place-crazy. He admires strength, but for what? Violence! This is the cult of the frontier mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The modern queer was invented by Tennessee Williams. Brando in blue jeans, sneakers, white T-shirt and leather jacket. When you sa...w that, you knew they were available.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing hero...es, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them--Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, ...and Samuel Beckett one--and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even--if you will--eccentricity. ...That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »