Genuinely Vonnegut, and precisely locatable: the essay “Here is a lesson in creative writing” in A Man Without a Country (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), page 24. Two sentences that are almost always lifted out of a passage telling the reader to sing in the shower and write a lousy poem for a friend.
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable” Kurt Vonnegut, "Here is a lesson in creative writing," in A Man Without a Country, ed. Daniel Simon (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 24
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Kurt Vonnegut — American novelist, essayist & Dresden POW. Theme: "The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Work
A Man Without a Country, essay: “Here is a lesson in creative writing”
Published
2005 — Seven Stories Press, New York; edited by Daniel Simon
Page
p. 24 (verified against scans by Quote Investigator)
Reprinted
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006, ed. Dave Eggers, p. 348
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
The two famous sentences are the set-up, not the conclusion. Everything after them is an instruction — and the passage opens, in Vonnegut’s usual manner, with a joke about annoying your parents.
Quote Investigator ↗ located the quotation and verified it against scans: A Man Without a Country, edited by Daniel Simon, chapter “Here is a lesson in creative writing,” p. 24 (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005).
Wikiquote’s sourced Vonnegut page ↗ independently lists the full passage under A Man Without a Country (2005), including the sentences that follow.
Quote Investigator ↗ traces the reprints too — the essay ran again in The Best American Nonrequired Reading (2006), ed. Dave Eggers, p. 348, which is how the passage reached a wider audience.
A physical copy of the 2005 Seven Stories edition is catalogued at the Internet Archive ↗ for anyone who wants to check page 24 against the book.
A Man Without a Country was published in 2005 by Seven Stories Press, decades past the 1931 United States public-domain threshold, and Vonnegut died in 2007. The text is in copyright: quote it with attribution, but it is not free to reprint.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Real quote — read the rest of the paragraph
The attribution holds up exactly. What the internet does to this one is cut it in half and invert its mood.
~
Contextthe missing instruction
Quoted alone, the two sentences read as consolation for not making money. In the essay they are followed immediately by orders: practise an art anyway, “no matter how well or badly”; sing in the shower; write a lousy poem for a friend. Quote Investigator ↗ prints the whole passage.
~
Contextthe missing joke
The passage opens with a gag about wanting to hurt your parents, which sets the register. Wikiquote ↗ preserves it; motivational graphics almost never do.
✓
The actual sourcethe printed essay, not a speech
The documented source is the essay “Here is a lesson in creative writing” in A Man Without a Country (2005), p. 24 ↗, which Quote Investigator ↗ verified against scans. Vonnegut gave a great many commencement addresses and reused his material freely, so a line like this is easy to take for speech material — but the page you can check is the printed one.
✓Verdict: really Vonnegut — A Man Without a Country ↗, p. 24, 2005 — and the sentence after it is the one doing the work.
Context
Why it mattered
Vonnegut was eighty-two and writing what turned out to be his last book, a short, cranky, funny collection of essays about America, war, oil and his own decline. This passage is the closest the book comes to advice.
The argument is a deliberate demotion. Art is not a career and not a talent contest — it is a household activity, like exercise, that makes a person more bearable to themselves. Which is why he immediately reduces the stakes to singing in the shower.
“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.”
Read the full story
The essay was reprinted the following year in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers, and the two sentences have since been anthologised into writing guides, Forbes’s quotations page and at least one advice compendium — usually stripped of the instructions that make them a programme rather than a sentiment.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1922–2007 · American novelist, essayist & Dresden POW
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) was an American novelist and essayist who survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war and spent the rest of his career writing about it, obliquely and then directly. Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions fused science fiction, black comedy and moral seriousness into a voice nobody has successfully imitated. In his last decades he wrote more essays than novels, and became one of the most quoted — and most misquoted — American writers on the internet.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Kurt Vonnegut, “Here is a lesson in creative writing,” in A Man Without a Country, ed. Daniel Simon (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), 24.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-arts-are-not-a-way-to-make-a-living-they-are-a-very/