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
“It was a gringo; in the remote corners of the world the short-sleeved flowered tourist shirt, the steel-rimmed glasses, khaki pants and bulldog shoes had become the uniform of earnest American enterprise. Moon recognized the man as the new missionary. His head was cropped too close, so that his white skull gleamed, and the red skin of his neck and jaw was riddled with old acne; his face was bald with anxiety and tiresome small agonies.”
― Peter Matthiessen, quote from At Play in the Fields of the Lord
“We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.”
― Marcel Proust, quote from The Captive & The Fugitive
“Mueve la cabeza de arriba abajo y frunce el ceño. - Ese es Matt Fuller. Es un sénior y nuestro Asesor promesa. -Me mira con los ojos entrecerrados y trata de leer mi mente.
- ¿En serio? - Sonrío demasido grande, porque ahora él sabe totalmente que estaba mintiendo acerca de la parte linda.
- ¿Cuándo? Estoy muy segura de que me acordaría de él. -Miro a Phillip con curiosidad.
- No lo recuerdo exactamente, pero creo que me vio cuando llevé en mis hombros a través del campus.- Phillip niega con la cabeza hacia mí-. Realmente no sé por qué dejo que te salgas con la tuya, con las cosas que haces.
- Porque soy irresistible, Phillip. - Sonrió y me encojo de hombros-. Tú no puedes ayudarte a ti mismo. Además, no fuiste por todo el campus, soló fueron unos cincuenta metros antes de que fingieras un ataque al corazón y te apoyarás en mi peso colapsando sobre mí en la hierba.
-Oh, sí. Lo recuerdo. Creo que has ganado algo de peso. - Golpeo su hombro.
Lo ignora y continúa -Ahora que lo pienso, creo que es cuando Matt te vió.
Me da una gran sonrisa. Justo ahora lo recordaba.
-Tu probablemente no te diste cuenta, porque estabas muy ocupada rodando en el césped conmigo.
- Estoy bastante segura de que estaba tratando de quitarte de encima de mí.
- Bueno, Matt no lo vio de esa manera puesto que me preguntó si tú eras mi novia.
-Oh Dios. ¿Qué historia inventaste está vez, Phillip?
Él sonríe. - Oh solo le dije que a pesar de que estas locamente enamorada de mí, no quiero estar atado, por lo que soló somos amigos. Por supuesto, lo que tendría que haber dicho es por favor solo llévatela, ella son muchos problemas de los que no valen la pena.”
― Jillian Dodd, quote from That Boy
“I refused to look back. I wasn’t dumb enough to turn around and peek over my shoulder. I was the type who yelled at the girls in scary movies who did so.”
― Amelia Hutchins, quote from Taunting Destiny
“But if your boyfriend, out of nowhere and with no advance warning whatsoever, dumps you for no apparent reason, is it really about you? Or is it all him?”
― Susane Colasanti, quote from Take Me There
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