That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time. — 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
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
“This is the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound. A storyteller, like any other sort of… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them in order that the… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“A writer off-guard since the materials with which he works are so dangerous can expect agony as quick as a thunderclap.” — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn’t have to write at all anymore if I didn’t want to. It was… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it… — 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
Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only… — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted. — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“I had a certain amount of skill as a dramatist, and Dr. Goebbels wanted me to use it” — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“The town was Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.” — Kurt Vonnegut Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
