xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Interviewed by Roger Friedman, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70164,00.html, FoxNews.com (11 November 2002) <br class="br">Various interviews

“I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Preface
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)

“Things die. All things die.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

Introduction, "About This Play"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

“A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“The controls were anything but a hunch-player’s delight in a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Epilogue “Reunion with Stony” (p. 303)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)

“The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer show.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A close paraphrase of this (beginning "Do not use...") is repeated in a commencement address at Cloves Hall, 27 April 2007, as reprinted in Armageddon in Retrospect
A Man Without a Country (2005)

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles away from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.
And everyday my government gives me a count of corpses created by the military service in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now — of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Prologue
Slapstick (1976)

“Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)