Vonnegut Quotes

“There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the
sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look
around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly
couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to
think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and
look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait...
To find out for certain what my wampeter was...
And who was in my karass...
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat's Cradle

“You're the man who stands on the street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each square are the words, 'I love you.' And each passer-by, no matter who, gets a square all his or her own. I don't want my square of toilet paper.'

I didn't realize it was toilet paper.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of the Perpetual Astonishment”
― Kurt Vonnegut (Author)

“We're here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Nothing is generous. New knowledge is a valuable commodity. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we are.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“It's a small world." . . . "When you put it in a cemetery it is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about the secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Mr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“Oh," said Castle. "Him." He shrugged. "People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“In this world, you get what you pay for.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“Poo-tee-weet?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be yours.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“Vonnegut is one of America's basic artists, a true and worthy heir to the grand tradition of Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Traven, Tom Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe, I mean) and Steinbeck. In other words, he writes out of a concern for justice, love, honesty, and hope.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“Writing was a spiritual exercise for my father, the only thing he really believed in.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Armageddon in Retrospect: And Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace

“Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“The fortifications have never been attacked, nor has any sane man ever proposed any reason why they should be attacked. They have never defended anything. Fourteen hundred persons are said to have died while building them. Of these fourteen hundred, about half are said to have been executed in public for substandard zeal.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“When I write, I feel like an armless leg less man with a crayon in his mouth.”
― Vonnegut

“Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen--
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice--
So many different people
In the same device.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“The unity in every second of all time and all wandering mankind, all wandering womankind, all wandering children.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“How-how do you do?" I asked. My heart was pounding. Blood boiled in my ears.
"It is not possible to make a mistake," she assured me.
I did not know this was a customary greeting given by all Bokonists when meeting a shy person. So, I responded with a feverish discussion of whether it was possible to make a mistake or not.
"My God, you have no idea how many mistakes I've already made. You're looking at the world's champion mistakemaker.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“What an optimistic animal man is!" said Rumfoord rosily. "Imagine expecting the species to last for ten million more years - as though people were as well-developed as turtles!" He shrugged. "Well - who knows - maybe human beings will last that long, just on the basis of pure cussedness. What's your guess?”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., The Sirens of Titan

“The picture is supposed to go up just inside the front door, so it's the first thing you see when you come in. It's green. It's about the size of a barn door. It has one vertical orange stripe, and it's called 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony.' Mother wrote a letter to the paper, saying the picture was an insult to the memory of Father, and to the memory of every serious artist who ever lived.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

“Как и в других книгах Воннегута, сюжет «Завтрака для чемпионов» был каким-то рваным и бессвязным. Мне кажется, книгу можно было бы разобрать на страницы, перетасовать их, как колоду карт, и потом читать в произвольном порядке — роман от этого нисколько не пострадал бы. Дело в том, что каждая его страница, если не каждый абзац, выражает вполне самостоятельную и глубоко осмысленную идею.”
― Gavin Extence, The Universe Versus Alex Woods

“Like so many other pathological personalities in positions of power a million years ago, he might do almost anything on impulse, feeling nothing much. The logical explanations for his actions, invented at leisure, always came afterwards”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

“This episode made me sorry to be alive, made me envy stones. I would rather have been a stone at the service of the Natural Order.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

“They needed lots of peace and quiet," said Roy, "and so do I, and so do you, I guess, and I'm sorry if I disturbed you. I wasn't doing anything a bird wouldn't do."
Some automatic device clicked in her big brain, and her knees felt weak, and there was a chilly feeling in her stomach. She was in love with this man.
They don't make memories like that anymore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

“She had replied, "You're a survivor, too, Willard."
"Well," he had said, " I used to think I was one, Mrs. Kaplan. Now I'm not so sure. I guess everybody who isn't dead yet is a survivor."
"Now, now," she had said, "let's talk about something pleasant. Let's talk about Baltra."
But the blood supply to his brain must have been momentarily dependable then, because *Wait had continued to follow this line of reasoning. He'd even given a dry little laugh. He'd said, "There are all these people bragging about how they're survivors, as though that's something very special. But the only kind of person who can't say that is a corpse."
"There, there," she'd said.”
― Kurt Vonnegut