“I
believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation
anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds
in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a
miracle.” -- Kurt Vonnegut
In
a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published 14 novels, 3 short story
collections, 5 plays, and 5 works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his
darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
Vonnegut
always claimed that it was by reading other great writers that he himself
developed the writing style and ideas that led to his success. Among the most influential on his writing, he
said, were George Orwell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry David Thoreau and H.G.
Wells.
A
journalist first, Vonnegut often credited journalistic writing as another key
to his style – one that made his writing both straightforward and
understandable by a wide audience.
“One of the things that I tell
beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a
seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why?
Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings,” he
said. “People are humanists … most of
them, anyway.”
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