"love is a hawk with velvet claws love is a rock with heart and veins love is a lion with satin jaws love is a storm with silken reins"
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Quote collection
Kurt Vonnegut quotes (page 24 of 49)
978 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The umpire had comical news. The congregation had been theoretically spotted from the air by a theoretical enemy. They were all theoretically dead now. The theoretical corpses laughed and ate a hearty noontime meal."
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"After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?"
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"Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes - "with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim."
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"Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future."
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"What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I'm told."
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"I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much."
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"Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first."
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"Those who live by electronics die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis."
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"She broke my heart. I didn't like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for."
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"The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman."
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"Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John."
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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC"
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"I don't know what anybody else in the world would want to thank America for, but man, it [jazz] works. What I like about it - and what public health people ought to like about it - it's safe sex."
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"I'm an old guy, and I was protesting during the Vietnam War. We killed fifty Asians for every loyal American. Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter, every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist, every poet aimed in the same direction. Afterwards, the power of this incredible new weapon dissipated."
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"He couldn't tell the difference between one politician and another. They were all formlessly enthusiastic chimpanzees to him."
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". . . hummings and clickings could be heard-the sounds attendant to the flow of electrons, now augmenting one maze of electromagnetic crises to a condition that was translatable from electrical qualities and quantities to a high grade of truth."
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"There was a time when I could vote for economic justice, and I can't anymore."
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"Farewell, hello, farewell, hello."
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"I can have oodles of charm when I want to."
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