Kurt Vonnegut

What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

And 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. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.

If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

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

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

I can have oodles of charm when I want to.

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.

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.

All of the true things I'm about to tell you are shameless lies.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

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

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

I want to stay 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.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

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.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.

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

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

The worst thing that could happen to anybody, would be to not be used for anything by anybody.

People have to talk about something just to keep their good voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, And don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

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

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.

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.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don�t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

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.'.

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

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