Quotes from book
Jailbird

Name: Jailbird
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut

Jailbird is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, originally published in 1979. The book is regarded as Kurt Vonnegut's "Watergate novel."The novel is narrated by protagonist Walter F. Starbuck, a man recently released from a minimum-security prison in Georgia after serving time for his small role in the Watergate Scandal. Jailbird is written as a standard memoir, revealing Starbuck's present situation, then coming full circle to tell the story of his first two days after being released from prison. Through Starbuck, Jailbird discusses the history of the American labor movement, alongside corporate America, McCarthyism, the Nixon administration, and Watergate.

“You couldn't help that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Jailbird (1979)

“What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Source: Jailbird (1979), p. 24

“That was the strength of the Nazis," she said. "They understood God better than anyone. They knew how to make him stay away.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Jailbird (1979)

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

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Source: Jailbird (1979), p. 14

“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."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

Jailbird (1979)

“Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Jailbird

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.