Kurt Vonnegut

Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.

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

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

Life is no way to treat an animal.

I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise

A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.

It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.

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

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

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?

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.

There were lots of things to stop and see-and then it was time to go, always time to go.

I love cell phones. I see people so happy and proud, walking around. Gesturing, you know. I'm like Karl Marx, I'm up for anything that makes people happy.

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

Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again.

I would not be interested in writing if I didn't feel that what I wrote was an act of good citizenship or an attempt, at any rate, to be a good citizen.