Kurt Vonnegut: Cytaty po angielsku

Kurt Vonnegut był amerykański pisarz i publicysta. Cytaty po angielsku.
Kurt Vonnegut: 415 cytatów4 Polubienia

“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.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

“Things die. All things die.”

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Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

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

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

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Kurt Vonnegut

Preface
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)

“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.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

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

“I don't care if I'm remembered or not when I'm dead. (A scientist I knew at General Electric, who was married to a woman named Josephine, said to me, "Why should I buy life insurance? If I die, I won't care what's happening to Jo. I won't care about anything. I'll be dead.")”

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Kurt Vonnegut

Fates Worse than Death (1991)

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Rzeźnia numer pięć

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

“Congressman Nixon had asked me why, as the son of immigrants who had been treated so well by Americans, as a man who had been treated like a son and been sent to Harvard by an American capitalist, I had been so ungrateful to the American economic system.
The answer I gave him was not original. Nothing about me has ever been original. I repeated what my one-time hero, Kenneth Whistler, had said in reply to the same general sort of question long, long ago. Whistler had been a witness at a trial of strikers accused of violence. The judge had become curious about him, had asked him why such a well-educated man from such a good family would so immerse himself in the working class.
My stolen answer to Nixon was this: "Why? The Sermon on the Mount, sir."”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Jailbird

Jailbird (1979)

“Hey — guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Śniadanie mistrzów

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

“These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaningless without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions.
Only inwardness remained to be explored.
Only the human soul remained terra incognita.
This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Syreny z Tytana

Źródło: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 8)

“Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant’s father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” at any price. The old man had punished Mona Lisa by having her used in an advertising campaign for suppositories. It was the free-enterprise way of handling beauty that threatened to get the upper hand.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Syreny z Tytana

Źródło: 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."”

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Kurt Vonnegut

I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)

“I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

On evolution vs. &quot;intelligent design&quot;, interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=18090&amp;title=kurt-vonnegut/ (13 September 2005) <br class="br">Various interviews

“The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus (1990)

“Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I've written, a few of the speeches I made.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

"Preface"
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

“The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Syreny z Tytana

Źródło: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 44)

“I hadn't aimed at anything. If I had thought of the bullet's hitting anything, I don't remember now. I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit. The bullet was a symbol, and nobody was ever hurt by a symbol. It was a farewell to my childhood and a confirmation of my manhood. Why didn't I use a blank cartridge? What kind of a symbol would that have been?”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Deadeye Dick

Describing an accident in which the narrator, as a child, accidentally shot a woman
Deadeye Dick (1982)

“We're having a celebration, so all sorts of things have been said which are not true," I said. "That's how to act at a party.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Bluebeard

Bluebeard (1987)

“I think yet again of my father, who struggled to become a painter after he was forced into early and unwelcome retirement by the Great Depression. He has reason to be optimistic about his new career, since the early stages of his pictures, whether still or portraits or landscapes, were full of pow. Mother, meaning to be helpful, would say of each one: "That's really wonderful, Kurt. Now all you have to do is finish it." He would then ruin it. I remember a portrait he did of his only brother, Alex, who was an insurance salesman, which he called "Special Agent". When he roughed it in, his hand and eye conspired with a few bold strokes to capture several important truths about Alex, including a hint of disappointment. Uncle Alex was a proud graduate of Harvard, who would rather have been a scholar of literature than an insurance man.
When Father finished the portrait, made sure every square inch of masonite had its share of paint, Uncle Alex had disappeared entirely. We had a drunk and lustful Queen Victoria instead. This was terrible.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

Fates Worse than Death (1991)

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”

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Kurt Vonnegut książka Jailbird

Źródło: Jailbird (1979), p. 14

“During my controlled near-death experiences, I’ve met Sir Isaac Newton, who died back in 1727 as often as I’ve met Saint Peter. They both hang out at the Heaven end of the blue tunnel of the Afterlife. Saint Peter is there because it’s his job. Sir Isaac is there because of his insatiable curiosity about what the blue tunnel is, how the blue tunnel works.
It isn’t enough for Newton that during his eighty-five years on Earth he invented calculus, codified and quantified the laws of gravity, motion and optics, and designed the first reflecting telescope. He can’t forgive himself for having left it to Darwin to come up with the theory of evolution, to Pasteur to come up with the germ theory, and to Albert Einstein to come up with relativity. “I must have been deaf, dumb, and blind not to have come up with those myself,” he said to me. “What could have been more obvious?””

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Kurt Vonnegut książka God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)