Quotes By Author: Kurt Vonnegut

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”

“I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then showed me how Joyce or Hemingway handled the same elements of the short story. The prof would have placed me in competition with the greatest writers of all time, and that would have ended my writing career.”

“If you can’t write clearly, you probably don’t think nearly as well as you think you do.”

“This isn’t the end, you know,” he said. “Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be – not even Judgment Day.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, “You think your dad’s a good chemist? They’re turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?”

“Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.”

“Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.”

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

“Sculptors feel that somebody else is using their hands, that they couldn’t possibly be doing this.”

“Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.”

“I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.”