Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
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One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.
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There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
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His poor soul was flooded with pleasure as he realized that one friend was all that a man needed in order to be well-supplied with friendship.
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What do I myself think of this particular book? I feel lousy about it, but I always feel lousy about my books.
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While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one slider said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it.
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The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.
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People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.
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I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.
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I now make my living by being impolite. I am clumsy at it.
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What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that flickered out.
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Here was what Kilgore Trout cried out to me in my father's voice: 'Make me young, make me young, make me young!'
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Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is - from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian. If I'd ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me.
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Old Norwegian Proverb: Swedes have short dicks but long memories.
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If you can do no good, at least do no harm.
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The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.
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Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
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If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.
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Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.
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History is merely a list of surprises. … It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.
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Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.
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It was in the nature of truly effective good-luck pieces that human beings never really owned them.
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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.
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All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.
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Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.