Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I wish youd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity.

Maturity,” Bokonontells us, “is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unlesslaughter can be said to remedy anything.

Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

He was looking for programs on which he might be allowed to appear. But it was too early in the evening for programs that allowed people with peculiar opinions to speak out. It was only a little after eight oclock, so all the shows were about silliness or murder.

If your brains were dynamite there wouldnt be enough to blow your hat off.

Vera had not sensed my approach. She was peering into the instrument and turning knobs with child-like seriousness and ineptitude. It was obvious that she had never used a microscope before. I stole closer to her, and then I said, Boo!She jerked her head away from the eyepiece.Hello, I said.You scared me to death, she said.Sorry, I said, and I laughed.These ancient games go on and on. Its nice they do.

There Bomar is, wherever he is, spending a fortune every day on liquor and beautiful women and expensive playthings, when he could find peace of mind right here with us, for a mere twenty cents.--Bomar

You were sick, but now youre well again, and theres work to do.

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other peoples vanity and foolishness.

The 2 prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.As the tag line of my favorite dirty joke would have it: Keep your hat on. We could wind up miles from here.

Every so often, in the midst of chaos, you come across an amazing, inexplicable instance of civic responsibility. Maybe the last shred of faith people have is in their firemen.

Things stayed peaceful in there, even as the crashing vehicles and the cries of the injured and dying reached a crescendo outside. I fry mine in butter! indeed.

My God, what have they done to you? This isnt a man, its a broken kite.

Flashlight beams danced crazily

And I am now compelled to wonder if wisdom has ever existed or can ever exist. Might wisdom be as impossible in this particular universe as a perpetual-motion machine?

The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.

As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.

The humanoids told Don that if he went home with a whore, she would cook him a meal of petroleum and coal products at fancy prices. And then, while he ate them, she would talk dirty about how fresh and full of natural juices the food was, even though the food was fake.

Artists, he said, are people who say, I cant fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay, or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they ought to be!

May I ask you a highly personal question?Its what life does all the time.