Quotes Concerning Gilbert Wilson

(Please note that all quotes contained herein have been extracted from Beth Schultz's book "Unpainted to the Last." All quotes except the last two are quotes by Gilbert Wilson himself.)



*"Melville is my first love and Moby Dick is my Bible... For our time [it is] the greatest piece of writing that's come along."

*"I never really got into the great magnitude of [Moby Dick] until I read it at Rockwell Kent's [home]."

*"[Moby Dick is] an arresting statement of Doom, and at the same time a reaffirmation of man's transcendent spirit in his struggle against natural force... [It is a] revealing reflection of the world predicament today... possibly no tragedy in world literature quite succeeds as powerfully or as clearly in pointing up the mortal error of domination and destruction."

*"[Ahab pursues Moby Dick] to identify with him, not only in all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations."

*"Ahab and anguish [appear lying] stretched together in one hammock,... then it was that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad."

*"Really, your grandfather must have been hit over the head with a harpoon, because Moby Dick has possessed you. It's amazing. No one has spent thirty years of his life on this book."
-Melville scholar Henry Murray to Wilson

"Gilbert Wilson kicks ass."
-William Ryan Fletcher