Kurt Vonnegut Quotes - Page 8

The brainless serenity of charwomen and janitors working late at night came over us. In a messy world we were at least making our little corner clean.

The row was actually about everything in creation, but it had for its subject of the moment the boy's mustache.

And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.

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.

She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.

A winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls trudged beside us, hearing what Miss Pefko said. She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

To the guards who walked up and down outside, each car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of blackbread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language.

My gosh," I said, "another human being."
"You'll never know how human," she said.
"Maybe I will," I said. "I could try."
I did try, and I do try, and I give you the toast of a happy man: May the warm springs of the girl pool never run dry.
-"Girl Pool

They made a science out of people?" she said. "What a crazy science that must be."
-"Mr. Z

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

I am not writing this book for people below the age of 18, but I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them.

She said his music was tuned to the biggest music there ever was, the music of the stars.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

Maybe I did hurt him, but I don’t think I could have hurt him much. He was one of the best-protected human beings who ever lives. People couldn’t get at him because he just wasn’t interested in people.

Take life seriously but none of the people in it.

Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father included, move. That's what it is to be human, I'm afraid.

I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.

profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.