Favorite Vonnegut Quotes

[Rumple Foreskin]

Got a favorite Kurt Vonnegut line or passage? Feel free to share it/them here.

Rumple Foreskin

==

So it goes.

How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

© Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-dance with Death

--

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.

And I realise some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by al-Qaida. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

© 2005 Kurt Vonnegut, extracted from: A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America

 

[Guest]

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

I believe this was from a Playboy interview re: Player Piano and Sci-Fi writing, but i could be wrong.

 

[cloudy]

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

He's right.

 

[OhMissScarlett]

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC.
from Vonnegut's Blues For America 07 January, 2006 Sunday Herald

 

[champagne1982]

Raise My Hand

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

If I could have but a moment
of time to sit and comprehend
blue-skinned sirens on a chilly
moon and why our God doesn't care;

I'd spend it with you and play
Heller's Catch 22. We must
be crazy to want to fly
and of course, we're normal
to want to finish the job
and just go home.

Billy Pilgrim did- to my delight
and satisfied his hunger
with a box of Wheaties,
and sex. Don't forget the sex.
Even the celibate think on it.

All those memories of a moment
when your captors held you up
as a human sheild and you lived
on, despite the efforts
stranger wanting to kill you.

Damn him, God wins and you -
wise and irreverant you -
depart and leave us the thought -
"We could have saved the Earth
but we were too damned cheap."

In salute to Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 - April 12, 2007)

 

[kairotic]

My personal favorite, one that doubles as a nifty piece of performance art, especially on a campus where most folks walk around like zombies.

"Free will! Free will!" - Kilgore Trout in Timequake

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

"I will never shit again!" That was me, the author of this book.
Slaughterhouse Five

 

[glynndah]

The guy in the building across the street from my husband's office had license plates ICE 9. When we asked him about Vonnegut, he looked confused and said it was because he worked at the ice plant.

 

[Grushenka]

So it goes.

Check out Lit's home page. Nice.

 

[Subo97]

Billy Pilgrim

I don't have the exact quote word ofr word, perhas someone else can find it. Billy Pilgrim, the hero of Slaughterhouse Five who said about coming unstuck in time, "Life is full of good times and bad times and if you really remember the good times, they will get you through the bad times." I apologize for any errors, but that's the memory still floating around in my brain for the last 40 years. The part of Kurt Vonnegut's work that has stayed with me is his humanity. He spoke truly and intimately to the human condition.

 

[Liar]

Check out Lit's home page. Nice.

That's classy.

 

[Liar]

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

 

[Guest]

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."

 

[Stella_Omega]

The guy in the building across the street from my husband's office had license plates ICE 9. When we asked him about Vonnegut, he looked confused and said it was because he worked at the ice plant.

"See the cat? see the cradle?"

(Some woman at the grocery store had two kids, named Colette and Dylan. "Lit major?" I said, and she said "uh... whut?")

 

[Stella_Omega]

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."

I believe he was being a bit disingenuous there, considering the influence his work has had on our society (or is that only wishful thinking on my part?)

 

[starrkers]

"See the cat? see the cradle?"

(Some woman at the grocery store had two kids, named Colette and Dylan. "Lit major?" I said, and she said "uh... whut?")

"If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy."


(I worked with James Joyce. He was 18 and a cub reporter. His parents were clueless)