A Quote by William T. Vollmann

I first got really interested in Noh in about 1977. There was an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana where I was going to high school. It was a really nice place. There was a New Directions paperback. It was the Pound/Fenollosa book, 'The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan.'
The first chance I had to go to Japan, which was in the early nineties, I went to a Noh play. I thought, 'This is very, very slow.' I noticed lots of people falling asleep. I didn't really know what was going on; I was getting a little sleepy myself. Then the more I studied it, the more fascinated I got.
I was interested in theatre, and the only experience that I had in high school was as an actor. But when I got in Conservatoire, my teachers would give me a lot of flack because I wasn't rehearsing my lines; I'd be doing stage management. I was interested in sound. I was interested in architecture. I was interested in every aspect of theatre.
I don't really think I got the full high school experience, only because when I got to high school for the first year, it was grades 9-10. We didn't have older grades. But besides that, it was normal. It was a regular public school. We didn't have much going on. It wasn't too crazy.
But then foreign critics right away made sweeping comparisons to haiku, noh theater, and directors like Ozu, as if the movie were somehow representative of Japan - which was, well, not what I was after. Similarly, with After Life, I deliberately set out to make a movie that was unlike what I imagined the foreign conception of Japan to be, and I figured non-Japanese wouldn't find it interesting at all.
I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku.
I guess I never really had a high school experience. I went for about a month, and on the first day one of my friends got punched in the eye. It was Southern California Public High School. Needless to say, I wasn't there for long.
'Speechless' is first and foremost a show about a family that doesn't have a ton of money, but they move into a really crappy house in a really nice neighborhood so their kids can go to a nice school.
There were two recording studios in Bellingham. One was really expensive, a "nice studio." We were at the point where we were young and irreverent. We would scoff at the idea of a nice studio. "Why would you want to go to a nice studio? Oh wow, they have really expensive gear. Ooh, that's really fancy. Well we've got an eight-track. We've got it going on here." Now that we have the resources, we're like, "Oh wow, a nice studio is pretty nice! They do have nice outboards here. It's actually a pretty good place." It's funny how much changes so quickly.
I didn't really have the entire high school experience. I've been working since I was six years old, so I didn't go to the classic high school.
I was actually losing about a pound a week which was really wonderful. It was a really nice, and good, and healthy way to do it. And I still got to eat my chocolate every day which was wonderful, although I haven't had a drink in a really, really, really long time. I love being outside and working out, and I sometimes jog with my husband, and sometimes I jog with one of my daughter's best friends, and it's incredible. I was able to do Pilates for the first time in my life, which is almost better than sex. Not quite, but almost.
When I was done with high school, I knew that music was really important to me and I knew I didn't want to be a cellist, but I wasn't really sure if I wanted to be a composer, or think about - I was just interested in the ideas behind music, I was interested in mathematics.
In high school, I was one of the cofounders of New Kids on the Block my freshman year in high school. But I also started studying theatre in high school my freshman year as well. So throughout high school, I was actually doing both.
I was very interested in politics in college and was heading to be a lawyer. I have a degree in economics and I was interested in it. I hadn't really gotten super serious about it and I'd done a lot of student politics in high school. I really think it would be interesting and fun and challenging to go into politics.
I wasn't interested in going to the school dances. I wasn't interested in going to the football games. What I wanted was to be in my room painting my walls and doing weird stuff. That's what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted, so that, to me, is my high school experience.
I grew up in the Midwest and never really felt at home there, and when I got to New York, I was really fearless. I feel like I really fell in love with the the place. But then, it's a place where your world is really big at first and then becomes really small. I found myself hardly leaving my neighborhood, like I made it into a small town.
My first gig was at Carle Place High School, which is in Nassau County, Long Island, New York. I was 14, and I was invited to play with this band, and I was so excited, but I was really petrified.
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