If you want to write serious books, you must be ready to break the forms.

In the late 1990s, I left the teaching field to write biographies and histories for young adults.

I must never write when I do not want to write.

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

My theory is that Kurt had a lot of residual pain from his childhood. And when you pile that on top of his experience in World War II - he was in Dresden when it was bombed and saw a city annihilated. When you combine those two things, my impression of Kurt Vonnegut at 84 was that he was a very pained and haunted man.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.