Kurt Vonnegut
328 quotes
Biography
"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."
"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
"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."
"And so it goes..."
"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."
"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."
"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."