Nick > Nick's Quotes

“This country," said Eliot, "had tremendous research projects devoted to fighting odors. They were supported by individual contributions given to mothers who marched on Sundays from door to door. The ideal of the research was to find a specific chemical deodorant for every odor. But then the hero, who was also the country's dictator, made a wonderful scientific breakthrough, even though he wasn't a scientist, and they didn't need the projects any more. He went right to the root of the problem."

"Uh huh," said the Senator. He couldn't stand stories by Kilgore Trout, was embarassed by his son. "He found one chemical that would eliminate all odors?"

"No. As I say, the hero was dictator, and he simply eliminated noses.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. 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 possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“The gaping trunk looked like the mouth of a village idiot who was explaining that he didn't know anything about anything.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“All I was doing was trying to get home from work.”
― Rosa Parks

“It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“What ho!" I said.
"What ho!" said Motty.
"What ho! What ho!"
"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.”
― Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"
"The mood will pass, sir.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.”
― P.G. Wodehouse , Uneasy Money

“She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". ”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?”
― P.G. Wodehouse , Mike and Psmith

“It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Whenever I get that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves

“He felt like a man who, chasing rainbows, has had one of them suddenly turn and bite him in the leg.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Mike and Psmith

“The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. ”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

“Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet