Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

I spent a lot of time in my head, but not like caring about what everybody else thought, just literally in my own world.

I've always lived in my head, which is very easy to do when you live and work in a city.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We, who have no such optical powers, are better pleased to take our last parting look at the visionary companions of many solitary hours, when the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full upon them.

When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.

Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.

My fancies are fireflies Specks of living light twinkling in the dark.

Imagination is something you do alone.

Little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea.

Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself - like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what's really there.

Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.

My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I'm not sure I wish I'd never gone there.

There's something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are.

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

I have a dark side; it's been pretty well documented. It wouldn't be bad to show that in some light in my work...It's something I no longer fear doing and am actually excited about doing.

I'm lonely I'll make me a world.

My head is my favorite swimming pool.

The world just feels different for those of us who come alive after dark. It's more fragile and unreal, a replica of the one everyone else inhabits.

The imagination says listen to me. I am your darkest voice. I am your 4 a.m. voice. I am the voice that wakes you up and says this is what I'm afraid of. Do not listen to me at your peril.... The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

My thoughts and I were of another world.

Now here I go again/I see the crystal visions. I keep my visions to myself.

Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night.

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.

Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity.

But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world -- a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.