Pity the Reader Quotes

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.3 Is this advice? It is for me. It says: You can do it. Every writer feels inept. Even Kurt Vonnegut. Just stick to your chair and keep on typing.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about [italics mine]. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“And so it goes as good advice for teachers who despair of teaching, for readers who don’t understand a difficult text, for anybody tackling anything and feeling inadequate to the task. That just about takes in all of us. Carry on! Cheer up! Have a good laugh! We’re all inadequate to our tasks!”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“teach us to do our own thinking, to find out who we were, what we loved, abhorred, what set off our trip wires, what tripped up our hearts.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Most important of all was his advice that I should not follow any of his suggestions ‘just because I suggested them.’ He emphasized that I should only carry out those suggestions ‘that ring a bell with you.’ He said I should not write or change anything simply because he (or any other editor or writer) suggested it unless the suggestions fit my own intention and vision for the book.” Wakefield says it was “one of the most valuable editorial lessons I ever learned.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Kurt Vonnegut said: When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.3 Is this advice? It is for me. It says: You can do it. Every writer feels inept. Even Kurt Vonnegut. Just stick to your chair and keep on typing.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“She claims that higher rates of mental illness among creative people do occur, although admits that they share “a personality style” which may impact that assertion: They take risks.… They have to confront doubt and rejection. And yet they have to persist in spite of that, because they believe strongly in the value of what they do.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“am persuaded that there are among us people who are tragically hooked on preparations for war.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Moral: Your job is your job. Ya gotta be present for it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.73”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Fetishism of famous writers, he suggested, occurs because “it’s such heavy-lifting to actually read books.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Moxie has limits. So does being well connected.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Some readers find the reiteration of “so it goes” irritating.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style

“Mental telepathy, with everybody constantly telling everybody everything, produced a sort of generalized indifference to all information.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style