You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman? — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I keep losing and regaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. And I myself am a work… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical.… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I don't plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn't be a closed system - it's a quest. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning style must… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape,… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“Don’t give up on books. They feel so good—their friendly heft. The sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
What everybody is well advised to do is to not write about your own life, this is if you want to write… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer. Writers have no one to… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
If you appear in the 'Atlantic' or 'Harper's' or the 'New Yorker,' by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself.… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“And I realize now that the two main themes of my novels were stated by my siblings: 'Here I am, cleaning shit… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
That's the secret of how to enjoy writing and how to make yourself meet high standards," said Mrs. Berman. "You don't write… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
It's only recently that I've come to understand that writers are not marginal to our society, that they, in fact, do all… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“The name of the book was The Big Board. He got a few paragraphs into it, and then he realized that he… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“And I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“In Trout's novel, The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank, the hero is on a space ship two hundred miles long and sixty-two miles in… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“You must bloom as a writer and I must bloom as a painter. Everything else about us is uninteresting.” — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“Have a good nap, did you?” said the porter. “Yes,” said Billy. “Man,” said the porter, “you sure had a hard-on.” — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“I told him that if we doubted that we are demons in Hell, he should read The Mysterious Stranger, which Mark Twain wrote in… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“Thomas Jefferson High School [..] His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of the world’s greatest theoreticians on… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“I had a certain amount of skill as a dramatist, and Dr. Goebbels wanted me to use it” — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“The town was Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.” — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“Her face was one of a kind, a surprising variation that made observers think, Yes--that would be another very nice way for people to… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“You finally fell in love, I see,” said Salo. “Only an Earthling year ago,” said Constant. “It took us that long to realize that… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“Like all Earthlings at the point of death, Mary Young sent faint reminders of herself to those who had known her. She released a… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“And contrast Mary Kathleen, if you will, with my wife Ruth, the Ophelia of the death camps, who believed that even the most intelligent… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if,… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share
