Vonnegut by the Dozen Quotes

“jokes can be noble. 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—and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut by the Dozen: Twelve Pieces by Kurt Vonnegut

“This is the secret of good storytelling: to lie, but to keep the arithmetic sound. A storyteller, like any other sort of enthusiastic liar, is on an unpredictable adventure. His initial lie, his premise, will suggest many new lies of its own. The storyteller must choose among them, seeking those which are most believable, which keep the arithmetic sound. Thus does a story generate itself.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut by the Dozen: Twelve Pieces by Kurt Vonnegut

“If Western Civilization were a person, we would be directing it to the nearest meeting of War-Preparers Anonymous. We would be telling it to stand up before the meeting and say, “My name is Western Civilization. I am a compulsive war-preparer. I have lost everything I ever cared about. I should have come here long ago. I first hit bottom in World War I.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut by the Dozen: Twelve Pieces by Kurt Vonnegut

“Apology number two: I am sorry for the damage that storytellers have done to the minds of the young. This is not my surrender to the Moral Majority, which burns my books. I will continue in my writing to hint where babies really come from, and that God shouldn’t be put in charge of everything until we get to know Him a little better, and that our exalted leaders are just like a lot of nitwits I went to high school with, and that American soldiers have been known to curse when wounded, and so on. I don’t apologize for any of that.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut by the Dozen: Twelve Pieces by Kurt Vonnegut

“It would be truly wonderful if we could live as alcoholics do, to be unwarlike for just another day. We don’t.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut by the Dozen: Twelve Pieces by Kurt Vonnegut

“I myself find him a master of utterly terminal pessimism, appalled by all that an insane humanity may yet survive to do. We are pollution. He wants us to feel no pity for Homo sapiens, and so excludes appealing women and children from his tales.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut by the Dozen: Twelve Pieces by Kurt Vonnegut