Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
They crawled into a forest like the big, unlucky mammals they were.
Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward – always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn’t that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education. She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all.
There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.
I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup detat imaginable.
There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference.
Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow – whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four-line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.
And even if the wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.
All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting…but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.. it’s that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.
Well here you are, there it is, THIS is what it’s all about.
During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we’ve ever been in – and which we lost – every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.
If you want to really hurt you 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. Practicing 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.
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow – whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four-line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.
A lack of seriousness has led to all sorts of wonderful insights.
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Kurt Vonnegut Quotes about Life
The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow.
How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on Aging
There was a photograph of Trout. He was an old man with a full black beard. He looked like a frightened, aging Jesus, whose sentence to crucifixion had been commuted to imprisonment for life.
On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn’t much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin – who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.
The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements.
You know — we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. “‘My God, my God — ‘ I said to myself, ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on High School
Short ridge High School was an elitist high school. In a way it was a scandal because you could go there no matter where you lived, if you could get there. It was for over-achievers. It was for people who were going to college. So we were very special and we were hated for being ritzy.
Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
In those days great teachers at Short ridge [High School] were celebrities. I would look up to them.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes about Writing
Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.
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.
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on Cat’s Cradle
I’m not a drug salesman. I’m a writer.
Americans… are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.
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.
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes about Time
Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.
I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we’re being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it’s over.
Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on Music
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC
Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.
No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes about Happiness
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.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes Slaughter House Five
It is, in the imagination of combat’s fans, the divinely listless love play that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called ‘mopping up.
At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.
All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet.
The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes so it Goes
And so it goes…
Kurt Vonnegut Quote Babies
There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.
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.
Kurt Vonnegut Quote on the Edge
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
Kurt Vonnegut Quote on Pretend
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut Quote to Practice any Art
To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on War
I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Giannini was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Vet Nam War.
War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.
He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.
Make war not on terrorism but on ignorance, on sickness and on environmental degradation.
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes on Love
There’s only one me, and I’m stuck with him.
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.
