Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Quotes on Writing, RSS
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When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
[Freedom of speech] isn’t something somebody else gives you. That’s something you give to yourself.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” … and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
“You hate America, don’t you?” she said. “That would be as silly as loving it,” I said. “It’s impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn’t interest me. It’s no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can’t think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can’t believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
1. Find a subject you care about. 2. Do not ramble, though. 3. Keep it simple. 4. Have the guts to cut. 5. Sound like yourself. 6. Say what you mean to say. 7. Pity the readers.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
Well, I’ve worried some about, you know, why write books … why are we teaching people to write books when presidents and senators do not read them, and generals do not read them. And it’s been the university experience that taught me that there is a very good reason, that you catch people before they become generals and presidents and so forth and you poison their minds with … humanity, and however you want to poison their minds, it’s presumably to encourage them to make a better world.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Anais Nin -
I don’t really start until I get my proofs back from the printers. Then I can begin my serious writing.
John Maynard Keynes -
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
John Maynard Keynes -
In order to find a more purposeful life you must let go of what society and people think of you and look inside yourself through some discipline – prayer, meditation – to find out what matters most to you and pursue it.
James Autry, poet and author -
Quantity has a quality all of its own.
Stalin (rumoured) -
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson