Palm Sunday Quotes

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”
― kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Anyway—because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next—and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis—at any time of night or day.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if they would contribute mutually to each others' welfare.

This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure of life, that we base our faith on firm foundations, on Truth for putting into action our ideas which do not depend on fables and ideas which Science has long ago proven to be false.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me is a miracle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, "Sir, you did not give us enough information." I would add to that, "All the same, Sir, I'm not persuaded that we did the best we could with the information we had. Toward the end there, anyway, we had tons of information.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamn lonely anymore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“I propose that every person out of work be required to submit a book report before he or she gets his or her welfare check.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday

“A society, on occasion, can be the worst possible describer of mental health.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“That's what is was to be young — to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“it has been my experience with literary critics and academics in this country that clarity looks a lot like laziness and ignorance and childishness and cheapness to them.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Here is how I propose to end book-banning in this country once and for all: Every candidate for school committee should be hooked up to a lie detector and asked this question: “Have you read a book from start to finish since high school?” or “Did you even read a book from start to finish in high school?”

If the truthful answer is “no,” then the candidate should be told politely that he cannot get on the school committee and blow off his big bazoo about how books make children crazy.

Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realize that they are attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans.

From now on, I intend to limit my discourse with dimwitted Savonarolas to this advice: "Have somebody read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution out loud to you, you God damned fool!"

Well--the American Civil Liberties Union or somebody like that will come to the scene of trouble, as they always do. They will explain what is in the Constitution, and to whom it applies.

They will win.

And there will be millions who are bewildered and heartbroken by the legal victory, who think some things should never be said--especially about religion.

They are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hi ho.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“After the war, I went to the University of Chicago, where I was pleased to study anthropology, a science that was mostly poetry, that involved almost no math at all.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Vanity rather than wisdom determines how the world is run.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“I'm on the New York State Council for the Arts now, and every so often some other member talks about sending notices to college English departments about some literary opportunity, and I say, "Send them to the chemistry departments, send them to the zoology departments, send them to the anthropology departments and the astronomy departments and physics departments, and all the medical and law schools. That's where the writers are most likely to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Sentences spoken by writers, unless they have been written out first, rarely say what writers wish to say. Writers are unlucky speakers, by and large, which accounts for their being in a profession which encourages them to stay at their desks for years, if necessary, pondering what to say next and how best to say it. Interviewers propose to speed up this process
by trepaning writers, so to speak, and fishing around in their brains for unused ideas which otherwise might never get out of there. Not a single idea has ever been discovered by means of this brutal method--and still the trepaning of authors goes on every day.

I now refuse all those who wish to take the top off my skull yet again. The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“As every married person here knows, love is a rotten substitute for respect.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday

“I am embarrassed. We are all embarrassed. We Americans have guided our destinies so clumsily, with all the world watching, that we must now protect ourselves against our own government and our own industries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday

“I can only reply that the secret to success in every human endeavor is total concentration. Ask any great athlete.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“The women's liberation movement of today in America, in its most oceanic sense, is a wish by women to be liked for something other than their reproductive abilities, especially since the planet is harrowingly overpopulated. And the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment by male state legislators is this clear statement by men, in my opinion: "We're sorry, girls, but your reproductive abilities are about all we can really like you for."

The truth.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Our freedom to say or write whatever we please in this country is holy to me. It is a rare privilege not only on this planet, but throughout the universe, I suspect. And it is not something somebody gave us. It is a thing we give to ourselves.

"Meditation is holy to me, for I believe that all the secrets of existence and nonexistence are somewhere in our heads--or in other people's heads.

"And I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.

"By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well.

"This to me is a miracle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage