Bluebeard

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Embarrassment

War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield.

Nowhere has the number zero been more of philosophical value than in the United States.

in the paintings which have greatness birth and death are always there.

they had more interesting ways of learning about vanity and the power of sex than studying a woman who had lived in another country one hundred and seventy-five years ago.

“You know the best part—” she said, “walking around like this and feeling good about everything. If you missed the rest of it, I certainly wouldn’t cry for you.”

I like to think we were man and wife. Life itself can be sacramental.

The real treasure the great universities offered was a lifelong membership in a respected artificial extended family.

Does Franklin Cooley, that poor, dumb bastard with six kids, his ears filled with the clashing gibberish of the mowers, have the least suspicion that earthshaking work is going on in here?

One would soon go mad if one took such coincidences too seriously. 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.

“The whole point of war is to put women everywhere in that condition. It’s always men against women, with the men only pretending to fight among themselves.”

the worst thing is that you keep finding yourself in the middle of the same old conversations, no matter who you’re talking to.

‘It’s just too fucking easy.’”

it’s as though you called me up out of the blue on a day like any other day, and asked me if I was grown up yet.”