
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself.

I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK.

Poverty is a relatively mild disease for even a very flimsy American soul, but uselessness will kill strong and weak souls alike, and kill every time.

A twerp was defined as a guy who put his set of false teeth up his rear end and bit the buttons off the backseats of taxicabs.

Q: What is wrong with the world?
A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.

He ate a pear. It was a hard one. It fought back against his grinding teeth. It snapped in juicy protest.

"Papa" referred to Frank five times as: " ... the blood son of Dr. Felix Hoenikker."
The phrase reeked of cannibalism.

My mother scared herself with her own queerness, and from that moment on I ceased to be her companion.

So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget.

It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth. The

The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do.

A lot of people were opposed to it. A lot of people were for it. I myself think about it as little as possible.

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago.

Everything is going to be unimaginably worse and is never going to get any better.

To me it's as though you called me up out of the blue on a day like any other day, and asked me if I was grown up yet.

He remembered his cry of the night before: We must meet in the middle of the Bridge!

You develop a style from writing a lot.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

He tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer."
"What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

My God, what have they done to you? This isn't a man, it's a broken kite.

I didn't need a timequake to teach me being alive was a crock of shit. i already knew that from my childhood and crucifixes and history books.

I've been living alone for so long, everything about me's private. I'm surprised anyone's able to understand a word I say.

Popular as he was as a graduation speaker, Vonnegut never graduated from college.

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

If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.

There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it babies, you've go to be kind".

That's what is was to be young - to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.

Another woman told Constant what it was the crowd felt it had a right to. 'We have a right to know what's going on!' she cried.

The coaches stunk of coal smoke and rationed tobacco and rationed booze and the farts of people eating wartime food.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

I'm convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

The honeymoon was taking place in the bittersweet mysteries of Indian Summer in New England.

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

And somebody might now want to ask me, "Can't you ever be serious?" The answer is, "No.

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

Get plenty of education. Lead you class in all things. Keep your body clean and strong. Keep your opinions to yourself.

To be is to do - Socrates To do is to be - Sartre Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra

Literature is the only art in which the audience performs the score.

His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand - passive resistance and open displays of contempt.

The fat woman's expression implied that she would go crazy on the spot if anybody did any more thinking.

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

It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free.

Thinking brainlessly with their spinal cords.

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

The mosaicist was making the fine hairs on the nape of Mona's swan neck out of chips of gold

Just in the nick of time they realized that it was their own habitat they were wrecking
that they weren't merely visitors.

Then again, I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good.

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

You will last a lot longer, if you don't try to sing.

Life is a garden, not a road. We enter and exit through the same gate. Wandering, where we go matters less than what we notice.

And on and on it went-that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes.

As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.

Quoth the doorbell with its silence, no comment at this time.

The third bullet was for the filthy flamingo, who stopped dead center in the road when the

They like life alright, but that they would like it even better if they could know that it was going to end sometime.

Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.

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

Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they are never, ever, going to get better.

There is no peace, I'm sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again.

Why should I bother with made-up games when there are so many real ones going on?

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

The name of the new religion," said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

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

Science never cheered up anyone. the human situation is just too awful.

I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with

The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky - as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.

Marguerite Young is unquestionably a genius.

He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn't had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

I'd give my right arm to be enthusiastic.

Lincoln was shot by a two-bit actor who was exercising his right to bear arms.

Life goes on- and a fool and his self respect are soon parted ...