Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

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

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

So it goes.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’

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.

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.’

The truth can be very queer indeed sometimes.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m probably wrong about everything, but I’m all right with that.

You can’t just eat good food. You’ve got to talk about it too. And you’ve got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.

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

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

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 country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

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?

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.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

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.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anyone tell you different.

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

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Given who he is and what he does, wouldn’t it be more appropriate for God to be called an editor rather than an author?

Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum.

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection.

I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals.

Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

I used to think that science fiction was just a way of avoiding disaster. That someone always manages to save the day before it’s too late. But one day I grew up and decided that I wasn’t going to write about my heroes winning anymore. Instead, I started writing about everyday people getting blown up, and living on. Because sometimes, there is no saving grace.

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.

I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.

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.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

No art is possible without a dance with death.

I am a humanist, which means I believe in the improvement of human beings through what we can learn from science and from working together. Einstein, a hero of mine, described the good life as one inspired by love and guided by knowledge, and I would add, one made possible by jokes as well.

When people say, ‘We mustn’t be sentimental,’ they mean, ‘We mustn’t say anything good or kind.’

I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that’s too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life!