Mark Vonnegut Quotes

Well, I hate it when authors come into a school and they say to kids, 'Write from your heart, only write what you know, and write from your heart.' I hate that because it's useless. I've written over 300 books - not one was written from my heart. Not one. They were all written for an audience, they were all written to entertain a certain audience.

Writing a book is quite an undertaking and I wouldn't want to do it just to do it.

The book works better if I know everything I can about the ending. Not just what happens, but how it happens and what the language is; not just the last sentence, but enough of the sentences surrounding that last sentence to know what the tone of voice is. I imagined it as something almost musical. Then you are writing toward something; you know the sound of your voice at the end of the story. That's how you want to sound in those final sentences: the degree that it is uplifting or not, the degree that it is melancholic or not.

Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I would, now it is their turn.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

For me, the goal is always to write a novel that I myself would like to read. People frequently ask me what my favorite book is, and in effect, there's always a capital-F Favorite, capital-B Book that I would like to write myself someday. I try to go for that ideal of writing the best, most entertaining, most beautifully written book that I possibly can.

What do I do when writing isn't going well? Well, I don't write - which is symptom, cure, and cause. And then sometimes I just tell myself, as I'm writing, "I'll fix it later." And sometimes it's true, I do.

I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.

I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book; it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.

Most books germinate within you for a long time before they are ready to come out. I wrote several drafts of the novel over many years and when I finally got to the last one, it didn't take much time.

What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion.

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say

I always think about the books I'm doing in pretty much the same way. I'm simply trying to write that particular novel as well as that particular novel can be written. I want to listen to what it is telling me, trying to figure out what it wants to do as much as what I want to do with it. There's a negotiation that's constant and ongoing between me and the material I'm working with, because I'm trying to listen to it.

It never occurred to me when I was young that I could be an author. That would be like saying, "I want to be a movie star" or "I want to be a wizard." I didn't have any concept of what that path would look like. Maybe that's why I didn't publish my first book until I was 38.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever weirdness was going to be in there, I felt, had to be earned. And it had to be required by the emotional needs of the book.

If you wrote a page a day, at the end of the year you would have a book. Whether it's any good or not is beside the point, but you would have a book, instead of just talking about it all the time.

My last book was speculative. I just don't quite know what I am doing. But I'll get there. I have a list of things I would love to write.

One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.

I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.

Normally writers do not talk much,because they are saving their conversations for the readers of their book- those invisible listeners with whom we wish to strike a sympathetic chord.

I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.

It's a great compliment that people think they're fast reads. It's always funny to me because it takes so long to get a book (written) -- for me, it's never quick.