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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 12

All Quotes Accidents Age Alcohol Apologizing Army Art Atheism Atheist Belief Bitterness Business Chaos Character Chemistry Children Christ Church College Communication Community Compassion Competition Country Creativity Culture Curiosity Dancing Democracy Design Dignity Doubt Dying Earth Evil Evolution Expectations Feelings Fighting Food Forgiveness Frustration Fun Funny Giving God Happiness Hard Work Hate Heart Heaven Hell Hiroshima Home Humanity Hurt Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Jazz Jesus Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Love Luck Lying Making Love Management Maturity Meaning Of Life Military Mountain Music Nature Opportunity Pain Past Philosophy Politics Progress Purpose Reading Reality Religion Revenge Running Safety School Science Science Fiction Shame Sleep Smoking Socialism Son Soul Students Stupidity Style Survival Teaching Technology Time Today Trade Tragedy Train Universe Waiting Wall War Water Wife Work Writing

Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.

Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.

Country, Past, Television

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Breakfast of Champions: Or, Goodbye Blue Monday!”, CNIB, 197

What war has always been is a puberty ceremony.

Peace, War, Ceremony

The death of a library, any library, suggests that the community has lost its soul.

Community, Soul, Library

... life, by definition, is never still.

Life, Definitions, Still Life

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.90, Dial Press

Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir." he read, "You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, " read Dwayne. "Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.

Hate, Brave, Next

Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

Brave, Healthy, Kind

Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale’s department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.

Stupid, Writing, Intelligent

"Player Piano". Book by Kurt Vonnegut, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 1952.

The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.

Writing, Fiction, Each Day

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.

Philosophy, Communication, Night

Kurt Vonnegut (2010). “Palm Sunday”, p.132, Random House

What Franklin Roosevelt did, which really offended them, was he strengthened the labor unions - made it possible for them to strike. The oligarchs were furious because the working class was not supposed to have any power at all.

Class, Unions, Franklin

He wanted to talk to them, if he could, to discover whether they had truths about life which he had never heard before. Here is what he hoped new truths might do for him: enable him to laugh at his troubles, to go on living, and to keep out of the North Wing of the Midland County General Hospital, which was for lunatics.

Wings, Laughing, Goes On

Kurt Vonnegut (1973). “Breakfast of champions: or, Goodbye blue Monday!”, Dell

Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes - "with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim.

Baby, Stars, Two

Kurt Vonnegut (1969). “Slaughterhouse-five: or, The children's crusade, a duty-dance with death”

He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.' 'All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,' he said. 'And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.' 'What's so negative about it?' I said. 'What could be a more negative word than "futility"?' he said. '"Ignorance,"' I said.

Daughter, Children, Ignorance

Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.92, Penguin

The First Amendment reads more like a dream than a law, and no other nation, so far as I know, has been crazy enough to include such a dream among its fundamental legal documents. I defend it because it has been so successful for two centuries in preserving our freedom and increasing our vitality, knowing that all arguments in support of it are certain to sound absurd.

Dream, Crazy, Successful

The book was Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout. It was about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three-dimensional Earthling doctors couldn't see those causes at all, or even imagine them.

Book, Doctors, People

KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

And 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. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.

Home, People, Wife

Kurt Vonnegut (1969). “Slaughterhouse-five: or, The children's crusade, a duty-dance with death”

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Sweet, Writing, Character

Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction”, Putnam Publishing Group

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?

Christian, Taken, Government

"Custodians of chaos", www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2006.

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

Writing, Humor, Men

"Kurt Vonnegut: In His Own Words". The Times (London), April 12, 2007.

I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Slaughterhouse Five, Mountain, Doe

Harold Bloom, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (2009). “Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five”, p.141, Infobase Publishing

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?

Freedom, Writing, Perfect

Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.187, Dial Press

Even as I speak, the very last polar bear may be dying of hunger on account of climate change, on account of us. And I sure miss the polar bears. Their babies are so warm and cuddly and trusting, just like ours.

Baby, Missing, Dying

Kurt Vonnegut (2008). “Armageddon in Retrospect”, p.23, Penguin

So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.

Art, Writing, Thinking

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.

Thinking, Turkeys, Leader

Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.42, Seven Stories Press

I went to New York to be born again. And when the train plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with its lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.

New York, Tunnels, Cities

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