Kurt Vonnegut · 80 pages
Rating: (13.1K votes)
“OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.
But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this:
“You are not enough people!”
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who has six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome.
Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“Tis better to have love and lust
Than to let our apparatus rust.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“Dr. Kevorkian has just unstrapped me from the gurney after yet another controlled near-death experience. I was lucky enough on this trip to interview none other than the late Adolf Hitler.
I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirectly, which might have had anything to do with the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course, were among those casualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million members of the Soviet Union, and so on.
I paid my dues along with everybody else,” he said.
It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be erected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889-1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in German: “Entschuldigen Sie.”
Roughly translated into English, this comes out, “I Beg Your Pardon,” or “Excuse Me.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“Cigars, of course, are made of trail mix, of crushed cashews and Granola and raisins, soaked in maple syrup and dried in the sun. Why not eat one tonight at bedtime?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“This morning, thanks to a controlled near-death experience, I was lucky enough to meet, at the far end of the blue tunnel, a man named Salvatore Biagini. Last July 8th, Mr. Biagini, a retired construction worker, age seventy, suffered a fatal heart attack while rescuing his beloved schnauzer, Teddy, from an assault by an unrestrained pit bull named Chele, in Queens.
The pit bull, with no previous record of violence against man or beast, jumped a four-foot fence in order to have at Teddy. Mr. Biagini, an unarmed man with a history of heart trouble, grabbed him, allowing the schnauzer to run away. So the pit bull bit Mr. Biagini in several places and then Mr. Biagini's heart quit beating, never to beat again. I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagini was philosophical. He said it sure as heck beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“Lincoln was shot by a two-bit actor who was exercising his right to bear arms.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“This is Kurt Vonnegut in the effing state-of-the-art lethal injection facility in Huntsville, effing, Texas signing off.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“Firearms are also good for you. Ask Charlton Heston, who once played Moses. Gunpowder has zero fat and zero cholesterol.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
“A síromon mindenesetre ez álljon: "Minden csodálatos volt. Semmi sem fáj.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
Kurt Vonnegut
Born place: in Indianapolis, Indiana, The United States
Born date November 11, 1922
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“People always sounded worried when I called them. Maybe because I only ever called a lot of them when I was in trouble and needed help. I needed to set up more lunch dates or have more parties, to cure people of the idea that a call from me automatically equaled danger. Then again, that was probably a lost cause.”
― Carrie Vaughn, quote from Kitty's House of Horrors
“This place has been my home. They liked me here. Not any more. Now they will look the other way. Now I don't belong.”
― David Millar, quote from Racing Through the Dark
“Some days I am the flower beneath the machine. And the machine rolls slowly on, blocking the sun, without a care for what it tramples beneath.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“74 Rikshospital. 10 May 2000. HARRY RECOGNISED BERNT BRANDHAUG AT ONCE. HE HAD a broad smile on his face and was staring at Harry with wide-open eyes. ‘Why’s he smiling?’ Harry asked. ‘Don’t ask me,’ Klemetsen said. ‘The facial muscles go stiff and people have all sorts of weird expressions. Now and then we have parents here who can’t recognise their own children because they’ve changed so much.”
― Jo Nesbø, quote from The Redbreast
“What do you need?" I asked, sitting beside him and fumbling through the mishmash in my lap. "How about this?"
I examined a container and read the label.
"Will belladonna do?"
"That's a poison, dear.I'd prefer if you didn't give me that." Even with his ghastly injury,his dry humor survived.”
― Cayla Kluver, quote from Allegiance
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