Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons Quotes

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. [...] And it strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that a man can always solve his problems. There is an implication that if you just have a little more energy, a little more fight, the problem can always be solved. That is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "science fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could. ”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“I believe all this, and much, much more, because I guess it is my duty to. But I pay a price for my gaga credulity, which I want to describe as a sort of intellectual seasickness.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons