Kurt Vonnegut

“The champagne was dead. So it goes.”

“Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with...”

“I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.”

“Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to...”

“Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.”

“It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an expe...”

“Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.”

“Nothing is generous. New knowledge is a valuable commodity. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we are.”

“The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.”

“What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would...”

“But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happines...”

“I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And I made this sad world A par-a-dise.”

“As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of a...”

“The most important thing I learnt on Tralfamadore was that 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 fu...”

“I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War...”

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”

“Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps...”

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

“I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn’t have to write at all anymore if I didn’t want to. It was the end of some sort of career. I don’t know why, exactly. I suppose that f...”