Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“And any man who cannot support himself by doing a job better than a machine is employed by the government, either in the Army or the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps.”

Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

“These displaced people need something, and the clergy can’t give it to them—or it’s impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it’s enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn’t enough, and I suspect they’re right.”

It isn’t knowledge that’s making trouble, but the uses it’s put to.”

I drink because I’m scared—just a little scared, so I don’t have to drink much.

“I’m going to get myself a uniform, so I’ll know what I think and stand for.”

“Nuttiest thing I ever heard of,” said the President. “You have to punch out the questions on that thingamajig, and the answers come out on tape from the whatchamacallits. You can’t just talk to it.” A doubt crossed his fine face. “I mean, you can’t, can you?”

"Hey, Google"

the shock of being the wife of a nobody might do tragic things.

“Anyway, Thoreau was in jail because he wouldn’t pay a tax to support the Mexican War. He didn’t believe in the war. And Emerson came to jail to see him. ‘Henry,’ he said, ‘why are you here?’ And Thoreau said, ‘Ralph, why aren’t you here?’ ”

“You shouldn’t let fear of jail keep you from doing what you believe in.” “Well, it doesn’t.” Paul reflected that the big trouble, really, was finding something to believe in.

“I’m doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit,” he said. “When you doctors figure out what you want, you’ll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.”

Make bread without a crust, if you want to.”

“Call the children, will you please, Edgar?” she said in a small, high voice. “Supper will be ready in twenty-eight seconds.”

“Nobody’s going to hurt you. These people are just your fellow Americans.” “Just because they were born in the same part of the world as I was, that doesn’t mean I have to come down here and wallow with them.”

“Now the machines take all the dangerous jobs, and the dumb bastards just get tucked away in big bunches of prefabs that look like the end of a game of Monopoly, or in barracks, and there’s nothing for them to do but set there and kind of hope for a big fire where maybe they can run into a burning building in front of everybody and run out with a baby in their arms.

Perhaps a muffled wisp of the applause reached the ears of his wife, the woman who had had faith in him when no one else had, across the water, on the Mainland.

“What’s his classification number?” said Halyard. “That’s just it. He hasn’t one.” “Then how can you call him a writer?” said Halyard. “Because he writes,” she said. “My dear girl,” said Halyard paternally, “on that basis, we’re all writers.” “Two days ago he had a number—W-441.” “Fiction novice,”

That was the trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was ordered into public-relations duty.”

All our robot tanks’d been pulled out to support a push the 106th was makin’, so we was really alone.

Vonnegut's unit was The 106th.

If they had to have a football rally, he wished they’d hold it somewhere where it wouldn’t bother him and his team.

“Well, it just don’t seem like nobody feels he’s worth a crap to nobody no more, and it’s a hell of a screwy thing, people gettin’ buggered by things they made theirselves.”