Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

I’m screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I’m funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that’s appreciated by young people.

When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.

I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we’re being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it’s over.

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

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

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

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

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

I have no degree in biochemistry, neither do I have one in mechanical engineering, as the Army saw fit to terminate both courses before they were finished.

A chaplain’s assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the American Army.

If people insist on living as if there’s no tomorrow, there really won’t be one.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system – it’s a quest.

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.