Kurt Vonnegut

Quotes

• “I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how tobecome a professional writer. I say to you, "...”
• “1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imagi...”
• “All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember...”
• “Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakin...”
• “Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick,""Huckleberry Finn,""A Farewell to Arms,""The Scarlet Letter,""The...”
• “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 ou...”
• “Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, thou...”
• “A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can...”
• “There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If the...”
• “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 m...”
• “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(George Santayana)I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're ...”
• “Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I ...”
• “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,...”
• “When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, "You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda cracke...”
• “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less clean...”
• “One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You wi...”
• “The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush...”
• “Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more t...”
• “If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDEDFOR THE EXISTENCE OF GODWAS MUSIC”
• “Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.”
• “Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.”
• “Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”
• “Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.”
• “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
• “I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”
• “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
• “To be is to do - SocratesTo do is to be - SartreDo Be Do Be Do - Sinatra”
• “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”
• “The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.”
• “I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.”
• “Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.”
• “You are better than you think. A-one, a-two a-three.”
• “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
• “The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”