Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

You can only be funny if you have matters of great importance on your mind.

It seems to me that the most universal revolutionary wish now or ever is a wish for heaven, a wish by a human being to be honored by angels for something other than beauty or usefulness.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read the greatest American short story, which is 'Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' by Ambrose Bierce.

Traveling is like dancing lessons from God.

I've been living alone for so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.

You realize, of course, that everything I say is horseshit.

Just because something feels better than anything else, that doesn't mean it's good for you.

History! Read it and weep!

It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems ... This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry-or laugh.

The person who writes the bank's commercials is not the person who makes the loans.

There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.

It is harder to be unhappy when you are eating.

People would be surprised if they knew how much in this world was due to prayers.

I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home.

What memories for mud to have.

Each one of us has to be what he or she is.

We're a terribly lonesome society. For all I know, all societies are. You can make a few new friends, that's all. You can't change history. History is happening to us now.

All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.

You are reading a bold and universal headline which says ,’I am here, I am here, I am here.

In the era of big brains, life stories could end up any which way. Look at mine.

How embarrassing to be human.

It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world — in the form of bad ideas.

A committee of three can accomplish much if two don't show up.

All the new technology seems redundant to me. I was quite happy with the United States mail service. And, I don't even have an answering machine, for God's sake.

We were German-Americans in a British colony, so we were outsiders.

There are lots of things worth doing that are no way to make a living. They are agreeable ways to make a more agreeable life.

He became fubar in the classic way, which is to say that he was the victim of a temporary arrangement that became permanent.

Hitler at the end thought that he himself was one more casualty in the war.

Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day.

You have to go, but I have to stay.

No matter how wonderful a sentence is, if it doesn't add new and useful information, it should be removed.

Well, it's practically over, thank God - I'm 83, there won't be that much more of it to put up with I don't think!

Novelists are people who have discovered that they can dampen their neuroses by writing make-believe. We will keep on doing that no matter what, while offering loftier explanations.

I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve. The best idea in that apple, though, is making jazz.

Love is where you find it.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

in nonsense is strength

You've got to be a good date for the reader.

Start [writing] as close to the end as possible.

It used to be said of a man who had suffered a catastrophic setback in his line of work that he had been handed his head on a platter. We are being handed our heads with tweezers now.

My special situation was that I was the son and grandson of architects. And so I saw building. We were building the city, and that was exciting.

Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.

You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them.

There is nothing like death to say what is always such an artificial thing to say: The End.

It is a sobering thought that Gomer Pyle and the Beverly Hillbillies may be among our chief interstellar emissaries.

The surface of Earth heaved and seethed in fecund restlessness. Earth was most fertile where the most death was.

If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke.

Wake up, you idiots! Whatever made you think that money was so valuable?

kar.a.bek.i.an (n.); (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both.

Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided.