Sentences spoken by writers, unless they have been written out first, rarely say what writers wish to say. Writers are unlucky speakers, by and large, which accounts for their being in a profession which encourages them to stay at their desks for years, if necessary, pondering what to say next and how best to say it. Interviewers propose to speed up this process
by trepaning writers, so to speak, and fishing around in their brains for unused ideas which otherwise might never get out of there. Not a single idea has ever been discovered by means of this brutal method--and still the trepaning of authors goes on every day.

I now refuse all those who wish to take the top off my skull yet again. The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.


Kurt Vonnegut

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

The fact is that if the writer's attention is on producing a work of art, a work that is good in its...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written b...
CORNELIA FUNKE
It is a commonplace to say that novelists should be judged by their work rather than their private l...
JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT
The market is still waiting for HSBC results, which will have a big impact on the direction of the m...
ANDREW TO
Property shares had a technical rebound, but interest rate concerns will still affect properties unt...
ANDREW TO
Bank of China's results were quite good; double-digit growth can be taken as good results for a bank...
ANDREW TO
The index tried to challenge 18,000 but failed, so that triggered profit taking. Tokyo's slide also ...
ANDREW TO
Trading seems to be focusing on selective counters because investors are cautious amid interest rate...
ANDREW TO
We're seeing a minor technical rebound after Wall Street rebounded from two days of losses. The key ...
ANDREW TO
Some investors have returned to pick up the stock at bargain prices.
ANDREW TO
I think the take-up for the placement is not too good and other property developers may be discourag...
ANDREW TO
We are afraid that our freedoms and liberties will be infringed in the future.
ANDREW TO
I think there was some minor selling pressure on telecom stocks as the market continued to see a wea...
ANDREW TO
How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine."
The Q...
LEWIS CARROLL
By all means, let us study the great writers of the past for their own sakes, but let us study them ...
ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH
People want the here and now, rather than the there and after; as most are living in the where and w...
ANTHONY LICCIONE
Ran out of things to say, metaphors for you. Why the ocean’s clear instead of blue, why mountains ...
DOMINIC RICCITELLO
I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best.
JONATHAN ANTHONY BURKETT
In a world of words, anything is possible...
LAURA WRIGHT LAROCHE
We are the books we read and the things we love.
CATH CROWLEY
You should give up sarcasm. People could get the wrong idea about you.
MICHAEL PRYOR
I know exactly who I am, what I'm about and who I will become.
EMMA PAUL
It is better to grope in the dark and wade through a million errors to reach the Truth than to entru...
SUDHIR KAKAR
If you argue with a fool, you become a fool.
L.A. HILDEN
Everyday is another chance to do something great.
EMMA PAUL
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm!
COLETTE
there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely ...
OSCAR WILDE
I think you can tell when you meet someone whether they read novels. There's some hollowness if they...
PHILIP HENSHER
Always be true to your friends, just as you are to yourself.
MEG CABOT
I have this feeling, like I'm waiting for something. But I have no idea what.
JENNIFER NIVEN
2.5.03.02.005: Generally speaking, if you fiddle with something, it will break. Don't.
JASPER FFORDE
Miranda Writes: Anything you say or do may be used for or against you within a story by a writer
JAZZ FEYLYNN
Basically, writers write because they have something to say...Everyone has a story in them, writers ...
VIRGINIA ALISON
O, the sheer magnificence of words that come together like waves upon a beach, each telling its own ...
JOHN M SHEEHAN
It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going...
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writer...
JAMES A. MICHENER
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the year...
T.S. ELIOT
Don't let your characters tell you what to do. They can be pushy. Some writers say that they cre...
CHELSEA CAIN
People gave us a purpose. Something to do all day, every day. At the end, I suppose, you spend a lot...
C. ROBERT CARGILL
Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In ...
ISAAC ASIMOV
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The earth is an arena of champions. We are all champions. We all did overcome millions of potential ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Truth is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not they believe it."

The logic in th...
SARAH MACLEAN
Want LESS! Need LESS! Live MORE!
TANYA MASSE
We all must learn that in some cases there is something much worse than saying the wrong thing; that...
RICHARD BELLZON
Too easy to get = Just as easy to forget.
MANDY HALE
Last words of wisdom. Whoever you were as a child, she's your future.
CHERISE WOLAS
One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one want...
CYNTHIA OZICK
Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.
FLORENCE KING
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it...
T.S. ELIOT
When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in ...
M. J. ROSE
Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal
ANDREW FAIRCHILD
It is easy to find the problem. Knowing the difference between critique and criticism is the solutio...
JT SANZ
I think the worst way a writer can self-betray is by not being true to his or her experience of bein...
THOMAS LIGOTTI
There’s a writer for you,” he said. “Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.�...
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Some read to learn, some to laugh, and some to live.
JOYCE RACHELLE
Writers sometimes write things for me and I like to see what they write because I want to see what t...
ISAIAH MUSTAFA
A Ritual to Read to Each Other


If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and...
WILLIAM STAFFORD
Maxim 1:
Pillage, then burn.

-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Merc...
HOWARD TAYLER
Every meeting led to a parting, and so it would, as long as life was mortal. In every meeting there ...
CASSANDRA CLARE
A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life:

1. Never put off to tomorrow wha...
THOMAS JEFFERSON
You love another person not because of his virtues- that is infatuation- but in spite of his faults,...
SUDHIR KAKAR
The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experi...
LIBBA BRAY
I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years
HENRY MOORE
If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them...
ISOBELLE CARMODY
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to ...
AUDRE LORDE
Only write what inspires you to write. If nothing inspires you write, anyhow. Something might come u...
A.J. CHILSON
To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.
TOM ROBBINS
I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.
SHANE L. KOYCZAN
All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.
LLOYD ALEXANDER
Everybody at Metro was in my gag department, including Irving Thalberg. They'd laugh their heads off...
BUSTER KEATON
I feel like the writers that I'm drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers w...
SAM SHEPARD
One Bagatelle, and I’ll raise you a novel,” Megan had tweeted back.

“Writing for te...
L.L. BARKAT
There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to ...
WOLE SOYINKA
It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa has been written by conquerors, foreigners, ...
JOHN HENRIK CLARKE
To be or not to be. That's not really a question.
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict. Writers who cannot grasp this truth, the t...
ROBERT MCKEE
Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like...
ERIC BROWN
I have made up my mind to say my say. I shall do it kindly, distinctly; but I am going to do it. I k...
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now ...
LISA CRON
I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I thin...
DAVID NICHOLLS
There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jes...
JOHN SHELBY SPONG
It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have al...
JODI PICOULT
Our conference is focused on helping authors be more successful in selling their books. Although Inf...
TOM GREGORY
Shelley, you’re just like that oyster.” God confronted me on the deeper areas of my life that I ...
SHELLEY LUBBEN
Writers just play out their fantasies in their books. They are often very unstable, tricky people, B...
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
That’s not fair!

Words we often speak when God's word becomes flesh in our lives 2 Timo...
JOHN M SHEEHAN
I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by ...
JANE AUSTEN
Pretty Song"

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return....
MARY OLIVER
I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers don't write from experience, though m...
NIKKI GIOVANNI
Suicide thought is a negative force that needs to be overcome with a positive force,positive thinkin...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
Suicide is an option for the unwise,but for the wise suicide has got no room to be given an option.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
Suicide is never the solution to life's problems but hope.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
When the mind is filled with positivity the thoughts of suicide becomes virtually non existing.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather lonely up there by themselves. He could...
J.M. BARRIE
Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls i...
JOSEPH CONRAD
Şi, vorbind mai general, oricare ţi-ar fi linia în viaţă, dacă constaţi că alţii nu-ţi pre...
BERTRAND RUSSELL, ÎN CăUTAREA FERICIRII
Charles,” Bones said distinctly. “You’d better have a splendid explanation for her being on to...
JEANIENE FROST
I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a gr...
SYLVIA PLATH

More Kurt Vonnegut

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
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
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