Writers on writing: Vonnegut

“When I teach – and I’ve taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for a couple of years, at City College, Harvard – I’m not looking for people who want to be writers. I’m looking for people who are passionate, who care terribly about something. There are people with a hell of a lot on their minds, Lee [Stringer] being a case in point, and if you have a hell of a lot on your mind, the language will arrive, the right words will arrive, paragraphing will be right, you have the case of Joseph Conrad, for whom English was a third language, and he was passionate in English. The words arrived and formed masterpieces.”

– Kurt Vonnegut

Like Shaking Hands With God: A Conversation About Writing, Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer, Seven Stories Press 1999