Kurt Vonnegut quote: "If somebody says, I love you, to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? I love you, too."

My cash cows, the slick magazines, were put out of business by TV.
KURT VONNEGUT

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the ki...
KURT VONNEGUT

Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been...
KURT VONNEGUT

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely y...
KURT VONNEGUT

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
KURT VONNEGUT

I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
KURT VONNEGUT

I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know...
KURT VONNEGUT

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
KURT VONNEGUT

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
KURT VONNEGUT

Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudic...
KURT VONNEGUT

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thin...
KURT VONNEGUT

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so ...
KURT VONNEGUT

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll h...
KURT VONNEGUT

I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evenin...
KURT VONNEGUT

Thinking doesn't seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical ...
KURT VONNEGUT

What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and c...
KURT VONNEGUT

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowled...
KURT VONNEGUT

Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak, and boy, we've got a lot more beef steak than any othe...
KURT VONNEGUT

... this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so inc...
KURT VONNEGUT

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much wi...
KURT VONNEGUT

We are all what we pretend to be, but, we had better be very careful what we pretend.
KURT VONNEGUT

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a ver...
KURT VONNEGUT

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds o...
KURT VONNEGUT

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than befo...
KURT VONNEGUT

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have...
KURT VONNEGUT

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos inste...
KURT VONNEGUT

There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him.
KURT VONNEGUT

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled Science Fiction and I would like out, par...
KURT VONNEGUT

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT

Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us hu...
KURT VONNEGUT

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to have without reser...
KURT VONNEGUT

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but...
KURT VONNEGUT

It was a thunderingly beautiful experience -- voluptuous, sexual, dangerous, and expensive as hell.
KURT VONNEGUT

We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrol...
KURT VONNEGUT

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
KURT VONNEGUT

Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this messag...
KURT VONNEGUT

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to rem...
KURT VONNEGUT

I have no degree in biochemistry, neither do I have one in mechanical engineering, as the Army saw f...
KURT VONNEGUT

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the countr...
KURT VONNEGUT

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American f...
KURT VONNEGUT

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since...
KURT VONNEGUT

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
KURT VONNEGUT

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of ...
KURT VONNEGUT

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It ...
KURT VONNEGUT

There is never a shortage anywhere of lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment, as though it were...
KURT VONNEGUT

I now make my living by being impolite. I am clumsy at it.
KURT VONNEGUT

If you appear in the 'Atlantic' or 'Harper's' or the 'New Yorker,' by Go...
KURT VONNEGUT

It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is be...
KURT VONNEGUT

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilitie...
KURT VONNEGUT

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wro...
KURT VONNEGUT

I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science f...
KURT VONNEGUT

This is Sunday, and the question arises, what'll I start tomorrow?
KURT VONNEGUT

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded t...
KURT VONNEGUT

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Pra...
KURT VONNEGUT

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment ...
KURT VONNEGUT

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best th...
KURT VONNEGUT

When I'm being funny, I try not to offend. I don't think much of what I've done has been...
KURT VONNEGUT

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very muc...
KURT VONNEGUT

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut.
KURT VONNEGUT

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.
KURT VONNEGUT

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a...
KURT VONNEGUT

I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I'...
KURT VONNEGUT

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
KURT VONNEGUT

Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
KURT VONNEGUT

I can have oodles of charm when I want to.
KURT VONNEGUT

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the char...
KURT VONNEGUT

The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe,...
KURT VONNEGUT

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the rich...
KURT VONNEGUT

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began l...
KURT VONNEGUT

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresente...
KURT VONNEGUT

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.
KURT VONNEGUT

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite herma...
KURT VONNEGUT

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. Th...
KURT VONNEGUT

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either...
KURT VONNEGUT

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than befo...
KURT VONNEGUT

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand
KURT VONNEGUT

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terri...
KURT VONNEGUT

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but...
KURT VONNEGUT

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
KURT VONNEGUT

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than befo...
KURT VONNEGUT

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person...
KURT VONNEGUT

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at le...
KURT VONNEGUT

I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, rea...
KURT VONNEGUT

How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
KURT VONNEGUT

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It si...
KURT VONNEGUT

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in ...
KURT VONNEGUT

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
KURT VONNEGUT

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to co...
KURT VONNEGUT

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
KURT VONNEGUT

Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The...
KURT VONNEGUT

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldi...
KURT VONNEGUT

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintena...
KURT VONNEGUT

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remed...
KURT VONNEGUT

I want to congratulate librarians,...who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democr...
KURT VONNEGUT

I'm screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I'm funnie...
KURT VONNEGUT

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.
KURT VONNEGUT

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.
KURT VONNEGUT

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It si...
KURT VONNEGUT

Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudic...
KURT VONNEGUT

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
KURT VONNEGUT

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet...
KURT VONNEGUT

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof,...
KURT VONNEGUT

As a Humanist, I love science. I hate superstition, which could never have given us A-bombs.
KURT VONNEGUT

The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitles, enigmatically, Evelyn and ...
KURT VONNEGUT

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read 'Democracy in America' by Alexis de Tocquevil...
KURT VONNEGUT

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.
KURT VONNEGUT

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old...
KURT VONNEGUT

To be is to do - Socrates

To do is to be - Sartre

Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
KURT VONNEGUT

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet an...
KURT VONNEGUT

If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do...
KURT VONNEGUT

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Gard...
KURT VONNEGUT

And I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this...
KURT VONNEGUT

Our government's got a war on drugs. That's certainly better then no drugs at all.
KURT VONNEGUT

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautifu...
KURT VONNEGUT

If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know...
KURT VONNEGUT

Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed peopl...
KURT VONNEGUT

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin a...
KURT VONNEGUT

I don't reveal to her that I love her. I keep poker faced. She might as well be looking at a cantalo...
KURT VONNEGUT

The biggest truth to face now – what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my lif...
KURT VONNEGUT

When a couple has an argument nowadays they may think it s about money or power or sex or how to rai...
KURT VONNEGUT

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that...
KURT VONNEGUT

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough...
KURT VONNEGUT

So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewh...
KURT VONNEGUT

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-ba...
KURT VONNEGUT

The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybod...
KURT VONNEGUT

Until you die .. it's all life.
KURT VONNEGUT

Round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin.
KURT VONNEGUT

We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap.
KURT VONNEGUT

All right - I'll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me.
KURT VONNEGUT

You can't just eat good food. You've got to talk about it too. And you've got to talk about it to so...
KURT VONNEGUT

Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
KURT VONNEGUT

And so it goes...
KURT VONNEGUT

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be...
KURT VONNEGUT

So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinkin...
KURT VONNEGUT

I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. ...
KURT VONNEGUT

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE...
KURT VONNEGUT

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, o...
KURT VONNEGUT

The fortifications have never been attacked, nor has any sane man ever proposed any reason why they ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Bertrand Russell declared that, in case he met God, he would say to Him, "Sir, you did not give us e...
KURT VONNEGUT

Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live ration...
KURT VONNEGUT

The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thi...
KURT VONNEGUT

Fear hadn’t come to him yet. Pain hadn’t come where pain would come. There was only the feeling ...
KURT VONNEGUT

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
KURT VONNEGUT

I still catch myself feeling blue about things that don't matter anymore.
KURT VONNEGUT

There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained ci...
KURT VONNEGUT

The book was Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout. It was about people whose mental dis...
KURT VONNEGUT

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Broth...
KURT VONNEGUT

All this happened, more or less.
KURT VONNEGUT

Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall...
KURT VONNEGUT

Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.
KURT VONNEGUT

The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Life is no way to treat an animal.
KURT VONNEGUT

A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.
KURT VONNEGUT

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.
KURT VONNEGUT

In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which tho...
KURT VONNEGUT

I wanted all things
To seem to make some sense,
So we could all be happy, yes,
Instea...
KURT VONNEGUT

Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transve...
KURT VONNEGUT

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't...
KURT VONNEGUT

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
KURT VONNEGUT

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'I...
KURT VONNEGUT

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got t...
KURT VONNEGUT

If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can an...
KURT VONNEGUT

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
KURT VONNEGUT

Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

*Harmless untruths
KURT VONNEGUT

profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and...
KURT VONNEGUT

Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-co...
KURT VONNEGUT

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or...
KURT VONNEGUT

The church, which squatted among the headstones like a wet mother dodo, had been at various times Pr...
KURT VONNEGUT

This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to ju...
KURT VONNEGUT

My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites,...
KURT VONNEGUT

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.
KURT VONNEGUT

Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism; Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism ...
KURT VONNEGUT

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the ki...
KURT VONNEGUT

This is a beguiling book,
KURT VONNEGUT

and I'm whistling as beautifully as I can.
KURT VONNEGUT

Here is the solution to the American drug problem suggested a couple years back by the wife of our P...
KURT VONNEGUT

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.
KURT VONNEGUT

The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the hu...
KURT VONNEGUT

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as gla...
KURT VONNEGUT

Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the...
KURT VONNEGUT

I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscie...
KURT VONNEGUT

The troops and their ladies had first drunk champagne. There were also remains of sandwiches, and I ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It m...
KURT VONNEGUT

It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.
KURT VONNEGUT

I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagian...
KURT VONNEGUT

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over...
KURT VONNEGUT

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless...
KURT VONNEGUT

Don't worry about your father. He's a perfectly contented, self-sufficient zombie.
KURT VONNEGUT

How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
KURT VONNEGUT

If you can do no good, at least do no harm.
KURT VONNEGUT

Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, sh...
KURT VONNEGUT

There are no telegraphs on Tralfamadore. But you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent ...
KURT VONNEGUT

Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will s...
KURT VONNEGUT

You asked the impossible of a machine and the machine complied.
KURT VONNEGUT

If somebody says, I love you, to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? I love you, too.

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Kurt Vonnegut

If somebody says, I love you, to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? I love you, too.

Kurt Vonnegut

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