Quotes by kurt vonnegut

“It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour.A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. Thats all I can say.”

“...because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a...”

“When I used to come home from school Mother used to ask me what happened that day, and Id tell her, said Miss Pefko. Now I come home from work and she asks me the same question, and all I can say i...”

“The lieutenant-colonel realized for the first time what most people never realize about themselves--that he was not only a victim of outrageous fortune, but one of outrageous fortune's cruelest age...”

“I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would ...”

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this coun...”

“I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.”

“A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or th...”

“There isnt any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and su...”

“By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle.”

“Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.”

“[Books] were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight an...”

“I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore.”

“I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.”

“There were lots of things to stop and see - and then it was time to go, always time to go.”

“When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.”

“Maybe I did hurt him, but I dont think I could have hurt him much. He was one of the best-protected human beings who ever lives. People couldnt get at him because he just wasnt interested in people.”

“I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, an...”

“Christ, back in Chicago, we dont make bicycles any more. Its allhuman relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out newways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter ...”

“What gets me most about these people, Daddy, isn't how ignorant they are, or how much they drink. It's the way they have of thinking that everything nice in the world is a gift to the poor people f...”