“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”
A close paraphrase of this (beginning "Do not use...") is repeated in a commencement address at Cloves Hall, 27 April 2007, as reprinted in Armageddon in Retrospect
A Man Without a Country (2005)
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Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
"A Word to the Wise Guy"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), The Dark Is Rising (1973), Chapter 3 “The Sign-Seeker” (p. 36)
“Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do.”
"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)
Context: I don't think the isolation of the American writer is a tradition; it's more that geographically he just is isolated, unless he happens to live in New York City. But I don't suppose there's a small town around the country that doesn't have a writer. The thing is that here you get to be a writer differently. I mean, a writer like Sartre decides, like any professional man, when he's fifteen, sixteen years old, that instead of being a doctor he's going to be a writer. And he absorbs the French tradition and proceeds from there. Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do. I mean, I don't know of any writers here who just started out to be writers, and then became writers. They just happen to fall into it.
“Too many rules and too much predictability absolutely kill creativity.”
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
