Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

You cant just eat good food. Youve got to talk about it too. And youve got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.

My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward.

I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as common decency. I treated somebody well for a little while, or even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in return. Love need not have anything to do with it. (...)Love is where you find it. I think it is foolosh to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency.

To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That’s all right. I like to have my heart broken.

The human race is a scummy thing, and so is Earth, and so are you.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: C-Students from Yale.George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athletes foot . . .PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . .So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occup

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

Another woman told Constant what it was the crowd felt it had a right to. We have a right to know whats going on! she cried.

That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old time big brains. They would tell their owners, in effect, Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course, its just fun to think about.And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it-have slaves fight each other to the death in the Colosseum, or burn people to death in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in indistrial quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and on.

Please look at the imperfect human being God gave to love you once, and try to like me a little for what I really was, or, God willing, am. Then please, darling, become an imperfect human being among imperfect human beings again.Jenny

Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with

Pretty, was she?Pretty? he echoed. Mister, when I see my first lady angel, if God ever sees fit to show me one, itll be her wings and not her face thatll make my mouth fall open. Ive already seen the prettiest face that ever could be.

Thats what is was to be young — to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (“How to Write with Style”. Essay, 1985)

When a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moment, past, present, future, always have existed, always will exist.

You hate America, dont you? That would be as silly as loving it, I said. Its impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesnt interest me. Its no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I cant think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I cant believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.

The highest possible form of treason, said Minton, is to say that Americans arent loved wherever they go, whatever they do. Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love.