Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

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?

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

All this happened, more or less.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!

If somebody says "I love you" to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? "I love you, too.

Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

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 anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.