Kurt Vonnegut

The most heartbreakingly beautiful girl I ever hope to see

Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.

A first grader should understand that her or his culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society...Cultural relativity is defensible, attractive. It's a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.

You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.

I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.

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

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

Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

Luck is not the hand of God.... Luck is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.

We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

"Self-taught, are you?" Julian Castle asked Newt. "Isn't everybody?" Newt inquired. "Very good answer." Castle was respectful.

It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems ... This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry-or laugh.

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

When the last living thing Has died on account of us, How poetical it would be If Earth could say, In a voice floating up Perhaps From the floor Of the Grand Canyon, "It is done." People did not like it here.

One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.

We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.