"When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlighenment and comfort at top speed"
Read quote
8 likes
Quote collection
Kurt Vonnegut quotes (page 14 of 49)
978 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"What's going to happen is, very soon, we're going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses. There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world."
Read quote
8 likes
"It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever."
Read quote
8 likes
"The arts are not a way to make a living."
Read quote
8 likes
"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"
Read quote
8 likes
"Don't worry about your father. He's a perfectly contented, self-sufficient zombie."
Read quote
8 likes
"How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is."
Read quote
8 likes
"I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer."
Read quote
8 likes
"Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows."
Read quote
8 likes
"Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise."
Read quote
8 likes
"Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what."
Read quote
8 likes
"Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled."
Read quote
8 likes
"A lover's a liar, To himself he lies, The truthful are loveless, Like oysters their eyes!"
Read quote
8 likes
"Oh, a lion hunter in the jungle dark, And a sleeping drunkard up in central park, and a Chinese dentist and a British queen All fit together in the same machine. Nice, nice, such very different people in the same device!"
Read quote
8 likes
"What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!"
Read quote
8 likes
"We are America's Great Lakes people, her freshwater people, not an oceanic but a continental people. Whenever I swim in an ocean, I feel as though I am swimming in chicken soup."
Read quote
8 likes
"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves."
Read quote
8 likes
"The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head."
Read quote
7 likes
"To be is to do - Socrates To do is to be - Sartre Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra"
Read quote
7 likes
"- Why me? - That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? - Yes. - Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
Read quote
7 likes