Kurt Vonnegut · 331 pages
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“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I wish you'd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I'm odd, I know,' he said. 'It's fear of myself that's made me odd.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing.
In the water I am beautiful. ”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“What in hell is a girl with hips like yours doing selling death?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“And I realize now that the two main themes of my novels were stated by my siblings: 'Here I am, cleaning shit off of practically everything' and 'No pain.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“Our aim is to make the world more beautiful than it was when we came into it. It can be done. You can do it--love yourself”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“He had the air of a spy in a melodrama, missing nothing, liking nothing, looking forward to the great day when everything would be turned upside down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my
lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate
has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I
can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding
present from your friend, EPICAC.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I think that scientific persons of the future will scoff at scientific persons of the present. They will scoff because scientific persons of the present thought so many important things were superstitious.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“Nobody ever went broke overestimating the vulgarity of the American people,”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“There are too many of us, and we are all too far apart,”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“John,” I said, “when you get older, you’re going to understand a lot of things you don’t understand now.” “You must mean nuclear physics,” he said. “I can hardly wait.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“When machines start delivering themselves,” I said, “I guess that’s when the people better start really worrying.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I am committing suicide by cigarette,” I replied. She thought that was reasonably funny. I didn’t. I thought it was hideous that I should scorn life that much, sucking away on cancer sticks. My brand is Pall Mall. The authentic suicides ask for Pall Malls. The dilettantes ask for Pell Mells.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“A woman's not a woman till the pills wear off.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I may not know what love is,” he said, “but, by God, at least I’ve never gotten drunk by myself.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“nervously. “I have never dared to concentrate as hard as I can for fear of the damage I might do. I’m to the point where a mere whim is a blockbuster.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“Fred Bockman is thirty and looks eighteen. Life has left no marks on him, because he hasn’t paid much attention to it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I am committing suicide by cigarette,” I replied. She thought that was reasonably funny. I didn’t. I thought it was hideous that I should scorn life that much, sucking away on cancer sticks.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“think that scientific persons of the future will scoff at scientific persons of the present. They will scoff because scientific persons of the present thought so many important things were superstitions.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“That's a mistake,' he said. 'You miss an awful lot of life that way. That's why you Yankees are so cold,' he said. 'You think too much. That's why you marry so seldom.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I have never dared to concentrate as hard as I can for fear of the damage I might do. I’m to the point where a mere whim is a blockbuster.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” —Thoreau”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“I never knew a writer’s wife who wasn’t beautiful.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“Don't forget to wind the restricted clock and put the confidential cat out.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
“Doris said the only thing anybody can say in an amateur theatrical society when somebody cries. She said, “Why, no dear—you were marvelous.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Welcome to the Monkey House
Kurt Vonnegut
Born place: in Indianapolis, Indiana, The United States
Born date November 11, 1922
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“He looked to me, his eyes softening. “This is my Hanna.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Beautiful Player
“There was a quote he could not quite remember, something about the past being an island surrounded by time. He had missed the last boat to the island.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Blackberry Wine
“I had never seen her naked, I was embarrassed. Today I can say that it was the embarrassment of gazing with pleasure at her body, of being the not impartial witness of her sixteen-year-old's beauty a few hours before Stefano touched her, penetrated her, disfigured her, perhaps, by making her pregnant. At the time it was just a tumultuous sensation of necessary awkwardness, a state in which you cannot avert the gaze or take away the hand without recognizing your own turmoil, without, by that retreat, declaring it, hence without coming into conflict with the undisturbed innocence of the one who is the cause of the turmoil, without expressing by that rejection the violent emotion that overwhelms you, so that it forces you to stay, to rest your gaze on the childish shoulders, on the breasts and stiffly cold nipples, on the narrow hips and the tense buttocks, on the black sex, on the long legs, on the tender knees, on the curved ankles, on the elegant feet; and to act as if it's nothing, when instead everything is there, present, in the poor dim room, amid the worn furniture, on the uneven, water-stained floor, and your heart is agitated, your veins inflamed.”
― quote from My Brilliant Friend
“... Mr. Purty has cheered me up. The task he has chosen for himself, of wooing my mother with a bright red pickup truck, a Patsy Cline tape, and a string of malapropisms, is ample justification to me for not taking the world too seriously, its relentless heartbreak notwithstanding… (Richard Russo, Straight Man)”
― Richard Russo, quote from Straight Man
“Can you at least tell us what these Sevens look like?" He said "could we pick one out in a crowd?"
"A long time ago, they used to appear wearing robes and golden girtles," Ivy explained.
"They sound like losers," Xavier muttered.”
― Alexandra Adornetto, quote from Heaven
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