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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes about Writing - Page 2

All Kurt Vonnegut Quotes Accidents Age Alcohol Apologizing Army Art Atheism Atheist Belief Bitterness Business Chaos Character Chemistry Children Christ Church College Communication Community Compassion Competition Country Creativity Culture Curiosity Dancing Democracy Design Dignity Doubt Dying Earth Evil Evolution Expectations Feelings Fighting Food Forgiveness Frustration Fun Funny Giving God Happiness Hard Work Hate Heart Heaven Hell Hiroshima Home Humanity Hurt Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Jazz Jesus Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Love Luck Lying Making Love Management Maturity Meaning Of Life Military Mountain Music Nature Opportunity Pain Past Philosophy Politics Progress Purpose Reading Reality Religion Revenge Running Safety School Science Science Fiction Shame Sleep Smoking Socialism Son Soul Students Stupidity Style Survival Teaching Technology Time Today Trade Tragedy Train Universe Waiting Wall War Water Wife Work Writing quotes

So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower,

So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.

Art, Writing, Thinking

Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?

Writing, Thinking, People

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.27, Dial Press

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Writing, Pneumonia, Making Love

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.

Writing, Opportunity, Culture

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Writing, Character, Roots

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Writing, Should Have, Giving

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

Ink and paper are as cheap as sand or water, almost. No board of directors has to convene in order to decide whether we can afford to write down this or that. I myself once staged the end of the world on two pieces of paper- at a cost of ...less than a penny, including wear and tear on my typewriter ribbon and the seat of my pants. 'Think of that.

Writing, Thinking, Typewriters

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Writing, Character, Glasses

Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.

Work, Writing, Common

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

Memorable, Writing, Angel

FaceBook post by Kurt Vonnegut from Aug 20, 2014

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

Lying, Writing, Men

"Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, ch. 127, 1963.

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.

Writing, Fans, Machines

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Breakfast of Champions: Or, Goodbye Blue Monday!”, CNIB, 197

I say the same thing about the death of James Wait. "Oh, well -- he wasn't going to write the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony anyway.

Writing, Symphony, Waiting

That's the secret of how to enjoy writing and how to make yourself meet high standards," said Mrs. Berman. "You don't write for the whole world, and you don't write for ten people, or two. You write for just one person.

Writing, Two, People

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.65, Dial Press

There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students read this book with good ideas or that book with good ideas until that's where we get our ideas. We don't think them; we read them in books. I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, anger about what our planet is. I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas.

Teacher, Book, Writing

Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too.

Writing, Dancer, Competition

I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere else have I found such thoughtful and literate reportage on the state of the American soul, as that soul makes itself known in the books we write.

Book, Writing, Thoughtful

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

Writing, Goes On, Matter

"The Latest Word" by Kurt Vonnegut, www.nytimes.com. October 30, 1966.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.

Mistake, Writing, Moon

Kurt Vonnegut (2007). “The Sirens of Titan”, p.41, Dial Press

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer.

Writing, Drug, Salesman

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Cat's Cradle: A Novel”, p.153, Dial Press

If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.

Hurt, Art, Writing

Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Timequake”, p.49, Penguin

Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.

Writing, People, Thank God

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Breakfast of Champions: Or, Goodbye Blue Monday!”, CNIB, 197

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

Art, Writing, Order

Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.

Book, Character, Writing

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Breakfast of Champions: Or, Goodbye Blue Monday!”, CNIB, 197

Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

Writing, Alive, Sacred

"Breakfast of Champions". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, 1973.

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