Authors — Quotes

Kurt Vonnegut Quotes: 81

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Mother Night
Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Player Piano
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
Slaughterhouse-Five
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDEDFOR THE EXISTENCE OF GODWAS MUSIC
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young
And so it goes...
Slaughterhouse-Five
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 Man Without a Country
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.
Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
The Sirens of Titan
And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.
How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
Slaughterhouse-Five
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.
A Man Without a Country
The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.
Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;Man got to tell himself he understand.
Cat's Cradle
To be is to do - SocratesTo do is to be - SartreDo Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'.
Slapstick or Lonesome No More!
Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.
Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
Cat's Cradle
If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'.
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.
Mother Night
As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.
Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
I wanted all thingsTo seem to make some sense,So we could all be happy, yes,Instead of tense.And I made up liesSo that they all fit nice,And I made this sad worldA par-a-dise.
A Man Without a Country
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.
Timequake
Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.
Cat's Cradle
Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.
No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ." "And?" "No damn cat, and no damn cradle.
Cat's Cradle
The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: "Nothing.
Cat's Cradle
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.
The Sirens of Titan
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
The Sirens of Titan
Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.
Cat's Cradle
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(George Santayana)I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
Timequake