Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. Al...
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living...
You know what the trouble is with New York? she asked me. No, I said. Nobody here, she said, believes that there is such a thing as innocence.
World War Two had certainly made everyone very tough.
The men wore loose loincloths that did little to conceal penes like pendulums on grandfather clocks. There
That is kind of like what I do, she said. She was demure about what she did. What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them.
Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101: 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2. Give the reader at least one character he o...
No trouble. There really isn’t a heck of a lot to the job.
As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight ag...
After all that men have done to the women and children and every other defenseless thing on this planet, it is time that not just every painting, but every piece of music, every statue, every play, ev...
The sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the newgovernment owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, evenafter slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarra...
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth," the long out-of-print science fiction writer went on.
When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, "You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?
If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.
I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't...
Think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago.
You want to know why I don’t have AIDS, why I’m not HIV-positive like so many other people? I don’t fuck around. It’s as simple as that. Trout
Today we do. On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about. There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity...
There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and...