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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes about Writing - Page 3

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

I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of

I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.

Writing, Thinking, Feelings

You develop a style from writing a lot.

Writing, Style

A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.

Stupid, Writing, Simple

Kurt Vonnegut (2016). “If This Isn't Nice What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live By”, p.112, RosettaBooks

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Writing, Character, Glasses

"Uncovering the secrets of storytelling" by Paul Willis, www.cnn.com. December 19, 2008.

She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].

Writing, Thinking, Fool

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Cat's Cradle: A Novel”, p.5, Dial Press

The person who writes the bank's commercials is not the person who makes the loans.

Business, Writing, Management

I would not be interested in writing if I didn't feel that what I wrote was an act of good citizenship or an attempt, at any rate, to be a good citizen.

Writing, Citizenship, Good Citizenship

"Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut".

What everybody is well advised to do is to not write about your own life, this is if you want to write fast. You will be writing about your own life anyway but you won't know it.

Writing, Want, Wells

Novelists are people who have discovered that they can dampen their neuroses by writing make-believe. We will keep on doing that no matter what, while offering loftier explanations.

Believe, Writing, Offering

I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing. In the water I am beautiful.

Beautiful, Writing, Helping Others

Start [writing] as close to the end as possible.

Writing, Ends

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

Writing, Stories, Done

Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Timequake”, p.109, Penguin

Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe.

Writing, Mean, Math

It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour. A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That’s all I can say.

Pain, Writing, Race

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Galapagos: A Novel”, Dial Press

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.

Writing, Character, Want Something

Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.189, Univ. Press of Mississippi

[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.

Writing, Thinking, Mountain

There were creative-writin g teachers long before there were creative-writin g courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors.

Teacher, Writing, Editors

I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good.

Writing, Depressive

Kurt Vonnegut (1998). “Timequake”, p.88, Penguin

I wonder now what Ernest Hemingways dictionary looked like, since he got along so well with dinky words that anybody can spell and truly understand.

Writing, Wonder, Wells

You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.

Writing, People, Decline

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Writing, Brain, Way

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

This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.

Writing, Trade, Sane

I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.

Writing, Opportunity, Palm Sunday

Kurt Vonnegut (1981). “Palm Sunday: an autobiographical collage”

Somebody realized, hey, students are printing dummy ads and dummy news stories, why don't they really print something. So there was the Shortridge Daily Echo, and a hell of a lot of writers have come out of Shortridge on that account. The head writer of the I Love Lucy show, Madelyn Pugh, was a schoolmate of mine. Dan Wakefield. Writing was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Writing, Echoes, News Stories

Every writer has to write his speech.

Writing, Speech

"Interview with Joseph Heller And Kurt Vonnegut". Interview with Carole Mallory, scrapsfromtheloft.com. September 28, 2017.

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