Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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

Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write! Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trouts unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.

And, if youll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think youll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just a matter of tidying up around the fringes of the big ideas.

The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius - a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in in general circulation. A genius working alone, he says, is invariably ignored as a lunatic.The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find; a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. A person like this working alone, says Slazinger, can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shaped should be.The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting, says Slazinger. Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.

So the people of Earth thought they had instructions from the Creator of the Universe Himself to wreck the joint. But they were going at it too slowly for the Elders, so the Elders put it into the peoples heads that they themselves were the life forms that were supposed to spread out through the Universe. This was a preposterous ideas, of course. In the words of a nameless author: How could all that meat, needing so much food and water and oxygen, and with bowel movements so enormous, expect to survive a trip of any distance whatsoever through the limitless void of outer space? It was a miracle that such ravenous and cumbersome giants could make a roundtrip for a 6-pack to the nearest grocery store.

I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated - and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, Why dont you have him killed?Ive thought of it, I said. Dont think I havent.Let me help you to think about it clearly, he said. His voice was deep. His beak was large. He wore a black mohair suit and a black string tie. His little red mouth was obscene. Youre looking at the situation through a red haze of hate, he said. What you need are the calm, wise services of a murder counsellor, who can plan the job for you, and save you an unnecessary trip to the hot squat.Where do I find one? I said.Youve found one, he said.Youre crazy, I said.Thats right, he said. Ive been in and out mental institutions all my life. That makes my services all the more appealing. If I were to testify against you, your lawyer would have no trouble establishing that I was a well-known nut, and a convicted felon besides.What was the felony? I said.A little thing - practising medicine without a license, he said.Not murder then? I said.No, he said, but that doesnt mean I havent murdered. As a matter of fact, I murdered almost everyone who had anything to do with convicting me of practising medicine without a license. He looked at the ceiling, did some arithmetic. Twenty-two, twenty-three - maybe more, he said. Maybe more. Ive killed them over a period of years, and I havent read the paper every single day.

I have no doubt that theyll tell you a lot of kind things about me when my back is turned. They may not have been behind the door when God passed out the pretty faces, but Heaven only knows where they were when He divided up the gratitude.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

This is a very bad book you’re writing,” I said to myself behind my leaks. “I know,” I said. “You’re afraid you’ll kill yourself the way your mother did,” I said. “I know,” I said. There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.

Sons of suicides seldom do well. Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootless than most, even in a notoriously rootless nation. They are squeamishly incurious about the past and numbly certain about the future to this grisly extent: they suspect that they, too, will kill themselves.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?Yes Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a plop of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

... the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the newgovernment owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, evenafter slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and theirdescendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines.

That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?Yes Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

Dwaynes bad chemicals made him take a loaded thirty-eight caliber revolver fromunder his pillow and stick it in his mouth. This was a tool whose only purpose was tomake holes in human beings. It looked like this:In Dwaynes part of the planet, anybody who wanted one could get one down at hislocal hardware store. Policemen all had them. So did the criminals. So did the peoplecaught in between.Criminals would point guns at people and say, Give me all your money, and thepeople usually would. And policemen would point their guns at criminals and say, Stopor whatever the situation called for, and the criminals usually would. Sometimes theywouldnt. Sometimes a wife would get so mad at her husband that she would put a holein him with a gun. Sometimes a husband would get so mad at his wife that he would puta hole in her. And so on.In the same week Dwayne Hoover ran amok, a fourteen-year-old Midland City boyput holes in his mother and father because he didnt want to show them the bad reportcard he had brought home. His lawyer planned to enter a plea of temporary insanity,which meant that at the time of the shooting the boy was unable to distinguish thedifference between right and wrong.· Sometimes people would put holes in famous people so they could be at least fairlyfamous, too. Sometimes people would get on airplanes which were supposed to fly tosomeplace, and they would offer to put holes in the pilot and co-pilot unless they flewthe airplane to someplace else.

The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it-and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts content. And we can even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.

The doctors agreed: He was going crazy...they didnt think it had anything to do with the war. They were sure Billy was going to pieces because his father had thrown him into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A swimming pool when he was a little boy, and had then taken him to the rim of the Grand Canyon.

He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life some day, the bartender put in. He scratched his head and frowned. Didnt I read in the paper the other day where theyd finally found out what it was?I missed that, I murmured. I saw that, said Sandra. About two days ago.Thats right, said the bartender.What is the secret of life? I asked.I forget, said Sandra.Protein, the bartender declared. They found out something about protein.Yeah, said Sandra, thats it.

What is the secret of life?’ I asked.‘I forget,’ said Sandra.‘Protein,’ the bartender declared. ‘They found something out about protein.‘‘Yeah,’ said Sandra, ‘that’s it.

Q: What is wrong with the world?A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.