Quotes by kurt vonnegut

“The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.The rarest of these specialists,...”

“So the people of Earth thought they had instructions from the Creator of the Universe Himself to wreck the joint. But they were going at it too slowly for the Elders, so the Elders put it into the ...”

“I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated - and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?""I've thought of it,...”

“I have no doubt that they'll tell you a lot of kind things about me when my back is turned. They may not have been behind the door when God passed out the pretty faces, but Heaven only knows where ...”

“He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.”

“This is a very bad book youre writing, I said to myself behind my leaks. I know, I said. Youre afraid youll kill yourself the way your mother did, I said. I know, I said. There in the cocktail loun...”

“The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears.”

“Sons of suicides seldom do well. Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootless than most, even in a notoriously rootless nation. They are squeamishly in...”

“One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.”

“That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?''Yes' Billy, in fact, ...”

“... the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the newgovernment owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, evenafter slavery was eliminated, because it was so ...”

“Dwayne's bad chemicals made him take a loaded thirty-eight caliber revolver fromunder his pillow and stick it in his mouth. This was a tool whose only purpose was tomake holes in human beings. It l...”

“The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it-and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tenni...”

“He gave me the key, which I later discovered would open practically every door in the hotel. I thanked him, and I made a small mistake we irony collectors often make: I tried to share an irony with...”

“The doctors agreed: He was going crazy...they didn't think it had anything to do with the war. They were sure Billy was going to pieces because his father had thrown him into the deep end of the Y....”

“...Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built b...”

“He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life some day,' the bartender put in. He scratched his head and frowned. 'Didn't I read in the paper the other day where they'd finally fou...”

“What is the secret of life? I asked.I forget, said Sandra.Protein, the bartender declared. They found something out about protein.Yeah, said Sandra, thats it.”

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”

“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness...”