Jailbird

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I am now in the abashed condition, five days after my fifty-sixth birthday, of realizing that I needn’t have bothered to write several books. A seven-word telegram would have done the job.

Not even in prison as I say, is there anything special about Harvard men.

a man can obey every law and still be the worst criminal of his time.”

They couldn’t stand it that even one American, even a black one, would think for even a minute that maybe America wasn’t the best country in the world.”

He said that the President of the United States ought to be given a wheel like that at his inauguration, to remind him and everybody else that all he could do was pretend to steer.

His reply, which he himself considered a bland statement of fact, fell so harshly on my ears that he might as well have slapped me hard in the face. He said this: “Fist-fucking films.”

“You couldn’t help it that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed—so you were a good man just the same.”