William T. Vollmann Quotes

If your purpose is to make money, you shouldn't get into writing.

It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful.

I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

When you act, you really have to give all of yourself, and if you're doing that purely for money, it's not healthy.

I have never been assigned a game, I have never made a game I didn't want to make. I've never done anything just to make somebody some money.

That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing.

When you are writing a song for something else, if you are doing something for money, I always think that's bad luck.

People in independent film have a passion; they're not in it for the money.

It hasn't always been easy, but you get to a point where you're not doing the solo stuff with any kind of expectation in terms of commercial or a business outcome, you're doing it because you believe in this.

The money thing, that's money, I don't play this for money, I play for the love of the game.

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises.... If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest, not what pays

Most entrepreneurs are not doing it for financial motives in the first place. They're just people who love creating.

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.

I just don't want to do a movie because it paid me a lot of money.

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

When I don't have a movie, I don't take a job just for the sake of working. I just sit it out until I find something I'm passionate about.

I never did films for the money or because I needed to buy a house or car. I do it because I love my job.

Nothing wrong with making money or doing what you need to do to sell, but I think it shows when you're writing something to pay the bills and when you're writing something because it's really your version of the world.

We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it's beautiful, not necessarily commercial.

I did a terrible television pilot that was so badly written and dumb that it became a turning point for me and I decided that I would never accept a job just because I needed the money.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

I actually went to study journalism at Northwestern, thinking that would be my Plan B for a career. But then I realized, if I'm going to struggle and make no money, I might as well do what I really want to do.

None of my movies have ever made any money, so it's not about commercial success for me. It's always the same thing. I want to create something valuable, something unusual and different that the world has never seen.

You can't do things for money. You just can't act them. There's gotta be something about the script that you really want to do. I wouldn't do a job if I didn't think I could do the best work I possibly could.

I write the books to amuse myself.