Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

"You are what you pretend to be, so be careful about who you pretend to be.", from

Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

It took us so long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”

Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

If you can’t write clearly, you probably don’t think nearly as well as you think you do.

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

If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have nerve enough to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.