Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction, with further collections being published after his death. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five .
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but dropped out in January 1943 and enlisted in the United States Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden and survived the Allied bombing of the city by taking refuge in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He later adopted his sister's three sons, after she died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident.
Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively but was not commercially successful. In the nearly 20 years that followed, Vonnegut published several novels that were only marginally successful, such as Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater . Vonnegut's breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The book's anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, Slaughterhouse-Five went to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures and commencement addresses around the country and received many awards and honors.
Later in his career, Vonnegut published several autobiographical essays and short-story collections, including Fates Worse Than Death , and A Man Without a Country . After his death, he was hailed as a morbidly comical commentator on the society in which he lived and as one of the most important contemporary writers. Vonnegut's son Mark published a compilation of his father's unpublished compositions, titled Armageddon in Retrospect. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction including five previously unpublished stories. Complete Stories was collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.
Wikipedia
“There's only one rule that I know of, babies — "God damn it, you've got to be kind."”
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
Context: Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
“The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not.”
Bennington College address (1970)
Context: The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage — and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still — I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art.
A Man Without a Country (2005)
Context: If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
“Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days.”
Source: Jailbird (1979), p. 12 (prologue)
Context: Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days. In public schools and in the homes of nice people it was and remains pretty much taboo to tell tales of labor's sufferings and derring-do.
“Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.”
Cold Turkey (2004)
Context: Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
Mother Night (1961)
Context: "You hate America, don't you?" she said.
"That would be as silly as loving it," I said. "It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will."
“When the excrement hit the air conditioner”
Recurring phrase throughout many chapters
Hocus Pocus (1990)
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I was on par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here.
What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this:
This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this:
What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe.
And so on.
Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.
Cold Turkey (2004)
Context: I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Galápagos (1985)
Context: Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next — and on and on.
“All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.”
Timequake (1997)
“Things don't stay the way they are," said Finnerty. "It's too entertaining to try to change them.”
Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 34 (p. 313)
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 78)
Originates in a 2007 blog post by Iain S. Thomas entitled The Fur http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/2007/08/fur.html
Misattributed
“And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”
Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 32 (p. 295)
The People One Knows
Palm Sunday (1981)
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 72)
He asked if it had a name, and I said “Indianapolis.”
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
Epilogue “Reunion with Stony” (p. 313)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)
As quoted in "Vonnegut's Blues For America" Sunday Herald (7 January 2006)
Various interviews
“George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.”
A Man Without a Country (2005)
“Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be.”
A Man Without a Country (2005)
As quoted in Science Fictionisms (1995), compiled by William Rotsler
Various interviews
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 7 “Victory” (p. 165; epigram)
“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”
A Man Without a Country (2005)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
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)
A Man Without a Country (2005)
Epilogue “Reunion with Stony” (p. 303)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)
Introduction, "About This Play"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
“I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.”
Preface
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)
Interviewed by Roger Friedman, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70164,00.html, FoxNews.com (11 November 2002)
Various interviews
Fates Worse than Death (1991)
“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Jailbird (1979)
“Hey — guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?”
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 8)
Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 2 “Cheers in the Wirehouse” (p. 56)
“My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."”
I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)
On evolution vs. "intelligent design", interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=18090&title=kurt-vonnegut/ (13 September 2005)
Various interviews
"Preface"
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)
