Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
During my most recently controlled near-death experience, I got to interview William Shakespeare. We did not hit it off. He said the dialect I spoke was the ugliest English he had ever heard, 'fit to split the ears of groundlings.' He asked if it had a name, and I said 'Indianapolis.'
Quotes to Explore
-
I get tired of comedies where there are a bunch of funny guys and a beautiful woman who doesn't do anything funny. And I don't like books where there's a rough-and-tumble boy and a really clever, snotty girl. That's just not my experience with teenagers.
-
With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.
-
I hate these platforms that are all over the place today; they are all about grabbing attention. They are suburban! I never do a platform. Well, I did, in the 1970s, but that was a bad experience.
-
I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction.
-
Being listened to and being heard is an experience that doesn't happen terribly often. To listen compassionately or nonjudgmentally to another person - not to get too heavy about it - but I once heard somebody say that was a form of real prayer.
-
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
-
I got the travel bug when I was quite young. My parents took me and my sisters out of school and we travelled all over Europe. It was an eye-opening experience and, although I love Norway, I also enjoy visiting new countries. I don't get homesick.
-
I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.
-
The reality, for me at least, is that the finest recreation of a paper game, played on computer, pales in comparison with the actual, face-to-face experience.
-
If your faith is opposed to experience, to human learning and investigation, it is not worth the breath used in giving it expression.
-
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
-
I'm not afraid of death, but I resent it. I think it's unfair and irritating.
-
In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
-
It'll be interesting to raise kids in New York City. I'm from suburbia, so I don't really have any experience with what it's going to be like here.
-
The air of the English is down-to-earth. They care about details; there's a tradition, but there's also a counter-culture: the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that's well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.
-
I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything. Nobody has that experience, actually.
-
A woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserves to experience unplanned joy.
-
I haven't written about an immigrant experience because I haven't experienced that before and am focused on existential themes.
-
I really feel very strongly that the person who runs for office is the courageous one, and the one who everybody has to know.
-
A couple of my friends started having babies, and I thought, 'Maybe one day, with the right guy.' I have to find the guy first.
-
I don't play the role of a villain, really, but I like playing anti-hero kind of roles. I like characters where there's conflict, drama, and more personal investment than just being heroes.
-
If you're reissuing something, it's important to have demos and everything else from that time that wasn't used.
-
Nothing runs forever. How you handle it, the most important thing is how you respect your audience, how you respect your cast, and being incredibly sensitive to how you wrap up any show when it ends a successful run.
-
During my most recently controlled near-death experience, I got to interview William Shakespeare. We did not hit it off. He said the dialect I spoke was the ugliest English he had ever heard, 'fit to split the ears of groundlings.' He asked if it had a name, and I said 'Indianapolis.'
