Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

We are already so many things by the time we reach the middle of life that it is possible to see that really anything can happen, and that, by extension, anything is doable. I decided I'd write 'The Calling' as someone else. Another writer entirely, a fictional one who would be played by me.

I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries just the way the reader does, so you're simultaneously the writer and the reader.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

My physical transformations - like changing my hair - are usually a reflection of what's inspiring me at the moment.

All of us have a 'voice' inside where all inspired thoughts come from. When I talk to children and aspiring writers, I always ask them to turn off the TV and listen to that voice inside them.

Having kids sets a bomb off in your life. It really makes you examine who you are, what you believe in and what you want to be. And that is magical for creativity.

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.

I've spent most of my life trying to wear a persona that didn't quite fit and when I started writing books, it was like finally becoming the right person.

As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.

On a good day I write, all day.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'

I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.

Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you're smart, you learn not to touch them.

I just really allowed my muse to be my guide and I just go with whatever I'm feeling.

I don't know why I write what I write.

When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

I never like to think that I design for a particular person. I design for the woman I wanted to be, the woman I used to be, and - to some degree - the woman I'm still a little piece of.

To write, you need to find what you love.

If I were to try and find a unifying emotion that kept me calm and focused while I was dancing or writing or solving a math problem, I think the one unifying thing about all those that keeps my interest is creativity.