Quotes from Deadeye Dick

“That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“To be is to do - Socrates.
To do is to be - Jean-Paul Satre.
Do be do be do -Frank Sinatra.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“egregious.

most people think that word means terrible or unheard of or unforgivable. it has a much more interesting story than that to tell. it means "outside the herd."
imagine that - thousands of people, outside the herd.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“I concluded that the best thing for me and for those around me was to want nothing, to be enthusiastic about nothing, to be as unmotivated as possible, in fact, so that I would never again hurt anyone.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die.

There is evil for you.

We cannot get rid of mankind’s fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.

I give you a holy word: DISARM.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“the late twentieth century will go down in history, i'm sure, as an era of pharmaceutical buffoonery.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“I identified a basic mistake my parents had made about life: They thought that it would be very wrong if anybody ever laughed at them.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of un-differentiated nothingness: Watch out for life. I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“the actress playing Celia could ask why god had ever put her on earth.
and then the voice from the back of the theater could rumble: "to reproduce. nothing else really interests me. all the rest is frippery.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“People talk a lot about all the homosexuals there are to see in Greenwich Village, but it was all the neuters that caught my eye that day. These were my people -- as used as I was to wanting love from nowhere, as certain as I was that almost anything desirable was likely to be booby-trapped.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life. I have caught life. I have come down with life.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“To be is to do’ — Socrates.
‘To do is to be’ — Jean-Paul Sartre.
‘Do be do be do’ — Frank Sinatra.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“Midland City had a goddess of discord all its own. This was a goddess who could not dance, would not dance, and hated everybody at the high school. She would like to claw away her face, she told us, so that people would stop seeing things in it that had nothing to do with what she was like inside. She was ready to die at any time, she said, because what men and boys thought about her and tried to do to her made her so ashamed. One of the first things she was going to do when she got to heaven, she said, was to ask somebody what was written on her face and why had it been put there.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“To all my friends and enemies in the buckeye state. Come on over. There's room for everybody in Shangri-La.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“Any city in any country, including my own hometown, was to me just another place where I might live or might not live.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“That is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“Adolf Hitler a ajuns cancelar al Germaniei in 1933, pe cand eu aveam de-abia un an. tata, care nu-l mai vazuse din 1914, i-a transmis cele mai calde felicitari si un cadou, pictura lui Hitler in acuarela, Biserica minorita din Viena.

Hitler a fost incantat. avea amintiri placute despre tata, din cate spunea, si l-a invitat in Germania, ca oaspete personal, sa ia seama la noua ordine sociala pe care o construia, sperand ca aceasta va dura vreo mie de ani, daca nu mai mult.

mama, tata si Felix, care avea noua ani pe-atunci, au plecat din Ohio in Germania, pentru 6 luni, in 1934. [..] si imediat ce s-au intors acasa, tata s-a apucat sa-si arboreze cadoul favorit de la Hitler, pe bratul orzontal al morii de vant. era un steag nazist, mare cat un cearceaf. era un lucru misterios, exuberant, si, din cate zicea mama, comunitatea era mandra si in acelasi timp invidioasa pe tata, pe ea si pe Felix. nimeni in Midland City nu intretinuse vreodata relatii de prietenie cu un sef de stat.

pana si eu apar intr-o poza din ziar. una cu toata familia noasta, in strada, in fata atelierului, privind in sus catre steagul nazist. sunt in brate la Mary Hoobler, bucatareasa noastra, care, incetul cu incetul, m-a invatat tot ce stia ea despre mancaruri si prajituri.

pe cand pozam toti in strada pt fotografia din ziar, tata avea 42 de ani. dupa cum spunea mama, in Germania trecuse printr-o profunda transfigurare spirituala. isi redefinise scopurile in viata. nu-i mai era de ajuns sa fie artist. avea de gand sa se faca profesor si activist politic. sa fie purtatorul de cuvant in America al noii ordini ce abia se nastea in Germania, dar care, cu timpul, urma sa devina salvarea lumii.

asta a fost, evident, o greseala.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“The boat is tied to shore. There aren't any oars in place. She isn't going anywhere. She wears a summer dress and a garden hat. Somebody has persuaded her to pose in the boat, with water around her and dappled with shade. She is laughing. She has just been married, or is about to be married. She will never be happier. She will never be more beautiful.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“Twenty-fours hours of sleeplessness had made her, in my eyes, anyway, and idealized representation of compassionate, long-suffering women of all ages everywhere.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“And it's special meaning for me was this: It is proof that sometime back when my father was a young, young man, he must have had a moment or two when he felt that he might have reason to take himself and his life seriously.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“he was the heir to a fortune earned principally by a quack medicine known as “Saint Elmo’s Remedy.” It was grain alcohol dyed purple, flavored with cloves and sarsaparilla root, and laced with opium and cocaine. As the joke goes: It was absolutely harmless unless discontinued.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“For some reason, the less you pay for a watch, the surer you can be that it will never stop.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“It's a widely accepted principle," he says, "that you can claim a piece of land which has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years, if only you will repeat this mantra endlessly: 'We discovered it, we discovered it, we discovered it. . . .”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

“That is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes. ***”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick

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Popular quotes

“I worry sometimes that our world actually values a lack of intelligence. Like we are considered normal if we spend our time thinking about what one of the Kardashians wears to a party, and we are considered strange if we wonder whether a bee’s parents grieve if said bee dives into the Central Park Reservoir and never makes it back to the hive.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from The Porcupine of Truth

“That kiss you gave me was the hottest kiss i've ever had. I pulled away because i was afraid i wouldn't be able to stop myself from ripping off your clothes. And that didn't seem like the right way to end a first date. I didn't want you to think that was all i was interested in."
She stared at him. There was silence again, but this time she didn't worry about how long it went on.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She said finally.
"I tried to, but every time i saw you afterward you disappeared. I got the feeling you were avoiding me."
"i didn't want things to be awkward."
"Yeah, there was nothing awkward about you hiding behind a plant when i came into the dining hall at lunch on wednesday."
"I wasn't hiding. I was, um, breathing. You know, oxygen. From the plant. Very oxygenated, that air is."
"Of course. I should have thought of that."
"It's a healthy thing. Not many people know about it.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Prom Nights from Hell

“Men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot understand, especially if it be a woman.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane

“The cabby left, muttering under his nose. "What's he muttering about?" Mr. Goliadkin thought through his tears. "I hired him for the evening, I'm sort of...within my rights nows...so there! I hired him for the evening, and that's the end of the matter. Even if he just stands there, it's all the same. It's as I will. I'm free to go, and free not to go. And that I'm now standing behind the woodpile--that, too, is quite all right...and don't you dare say anything; I say, the gentleman wants to stand behind the woodpile, so he stands behind the woodpile...and it's no taint to anybody's honor--so there! So there, lady mine, if you'd like to know. Thus and so, I say, but in our age, lady mine, nobody lives in a hut. So there! In our industrial age, lady mine, you can't get anywhere without good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example...You say one must serve as a chief clerk and live in a hut on the seashore. First of all, lady mine, there are no chief clerks on the seashore, and second, you and I can't possible get to be a chief clerk. For, to take an example, suppose I apply, I show up--thus and so, as a chief clerk, say, sort of...and protect me from my enemy...and they'll tell you, my lady, say, sort of...there are lots of chief clerks, and here you're not at some émigrée Falbala's, where you learned good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example. Good behavior, my lady, means sitting at home, respecting your father, and not thinking of any little suitors before it's time. Little suitors, my lady, will be found in due time! So there! Of course, one must indisputably have certain talents, to wit: playing the piano on occasion, speaking French, some history, geography, catechism, and arithmetic--so there!--but not more. Also cooking; cooking should unfailingly be part of every well-behaved girl's knowledge!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Double

“The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers...of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good...They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem. This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good. It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found...This is the meaning of the riddle of the improbable philosopher-kings. They have a true community that is exemplary for all other communities.”
― Allan Bloom, quote from The Closing of the American Mind

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.