Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quotes
That's what is was to be young — to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.
When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (“How to Write with Style”. Essay, 1985)
In case nobody has told you, " she said, "this is the United States of America, where nobody has a right to rely on anybody else--where everybody learns to make his or her own way.
We didn't belong anywhere in particular any more. We were interchangeable parts in the American machine.
She said his music was tuned to the biggest music there ever was, the music of the stars.
It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.
I identified a basic mistake my parents had made about life: They thought that it would be very wrong if anybody ever laughed at them.
And Castle nodded sagely. 'So this is a picture of the meaninglessness of it all! I couldn't agree
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from the things she found in gift shops.
Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.
What is the secret of life?’ I asked.‘I forget, ’ said Sandra.‘Protein, ’ the bartender declared. ‘They found something out about protein.‘‘Yeah, ’ said Sandra, ‘that’s it.
Q: What is wrong with the world?A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.
Tis better to have love and lustThan to let our apparatus rust.
How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
Fear hadn’t come to him yet. Pain hadn’t come where pain would come. There was only the feeling of having done something perfect at last—the taste of a drink from a cold, pure spring.
He was a black hole to anyone who might imagine that he or she was a friend of his.
When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water.
Maturity, ” Bokonontells us, “is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unlesslaughter can be said to remedy anything.
If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off.
The 2 prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.As the tag line of my favorite dirty joke would have it: "Keep your hat on. We could wind up miles from here.
Every so often, in the midst of chaos, you come across an amazing, inexplicable instance of civic responsibility. Maybe the last shred of faith people have is in their firemen.
Things stayed peaceful in there, even as the crashing vehicles and the cries of the injured and dying reached a crescendo outside. "I fry mine in butter!" indeed.
And I am now compelled to wonder if wisdom has ever existed or can ever exist. Might wisdom be as impossible in this particular universe as a perpetual-motion machine?
As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.
May I ask you a highly personal question?""It's what life does all the time.
As I spoke of another's love and looked into the wide, blue windows of her soul, a rich, insistent yearning flooded my senses.--"Tango
He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.
Only one English word adequately describes his transformation of the islands from worthless to priceless: magical.
They made a science out of people?" she said. "What a crazy science that must be."--"Mr. Z
