Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

So much of my own life inspires what I write. Whether it's work, family, friends, motherhood, I am a writer who tends to write what she knows. In 'Revenge Wears Prada,' a great deal of my own life finds its way into the book.

I actually find it pretty tedious when magazines ask me to write articles based on my real life, because I've already lived it and there's nothing new to discover. So, I'm unlikely to write a memoir.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

Like most writers, I write about what has happened to me as that involves the minimum amount of research.

I think people who write for kids, we have that ability to go back into our own lives.

Writers do draw inspiration from their own lives, which, quite frankly, might be more interesting than fiction.

They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.

Something about your life always makes its way into your stories. That's just the nature of the beast.

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.

I don't believe you just create a character out of thin air, there's always something of yourself you bring.

I like to write about what I've seen and experiences I've been through.

I don't write anything that I hadn't experienced or hadn't been through.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

You want to write something as good as what you've read.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.

A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.

Just start writing and you'll find what you want to say.

I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote about certain things he knew, he knew the ins and outs, back to fronts of what he was talking about. I love that as an inspiration for myself, to keep it true to what you know. I'm always writing little lines and saving them for later.