Vonnegut quotes

Player Piano

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Sirens of Titan

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Mother Night

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Cat's Cradle

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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

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Welcome to the Monkey House

"I am committing suicide by cigarette," I replied. [...]  The Public health authorities 
never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that
smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.
(Preface, pages x-xi)

He stayed away from all kinds of gatherings because he never could think of anything to
say or do without a script.
("Who am I this Time", page 15)

"When the machines start delivering themselves," I said, "I guess that's when the people
better start really worrying."
("Who am I this Time", page 15)

We were walking through the park,
A-goosing statues in the dark.
If Sherman's horse can take it,
So can you.
("Welcome to the Monkey House", page 31)

"The world can't afford sex anymore."
	"Of course it can afford sex," said Billy.  "All it can't afford anymore is
reproduction."
("Welcome to the Monkey House", page 45)

	"A walk?" said Catherine.
	"One foot in front of the other," said Newt, "through leaves, over bridges--"
("Long Walk to Forever", page 48)

"Women aren't very clever at hiding it [love]."
("Long Walk to Forever", page 51)

"Greatest actresses in the world.  American women." [...] "American women act and dress as
though they're going to give you the world.  Then, when you stick out your hand, they put
an ice cube in it."
("Miss Temptation", page 72)

"No accounting for tastes."
("Miss Temptation", page 76)

"We all are [tender blossoms], corporal -- we all are." he said.  "I thought that was one of
the few good things about sending a boy off to the Army.  I thought that was where he could
find out for sure he wasn't the only tender blossom on earth."
("Miss Temptation", page 78)

"Without rules, my friend, games become nonsense."
("All the King's Horses", page 96)

"Let somebody else worry about getting food, building shelters and keeping warm, while you
sleep in front of a fire or go chasing after the girls or raise hell with the boys.  No
mortgages, no politics, no war, no work, no worry.  Just wag the old tail or lick a hand,
and you're all taken care of."
("Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog", page 109)

"Ever belong to any organization listed as subversive by the Attorney General's office?"
("Next Door", pages 120-121)

"The boy went swimming just before you got here," said the Commodore.  "He should be back
at any time, unless he's been decapitated by a member of the Irish Mafia on water skis."
("The Hyannis Port Story", page 143)

"...but you know how rich people are."
	"Demoralized and bankrupt by confiscatory taxation," said the Commodore.
("The Hyannis Port Story", page 144)

"Don't forget the wind the restricted clock and put the confidential cat out."
("Report on the Barnhouse Effect", page 171)

But if somebody think he wants peace of mind the way we found it, he'd be well advised to
seek coronary thrombosis instead.
("The Euphio Question", page 177)

"Do?  What is there to do but report it in some suitable journal?"
("The Euphio Question", page 181)

	"I'll have to think a minute," I said.
	"That's a mistake," he said.  "You miss an awful lot of life that way.  That's why
you Yankees are so cold," he said.
("Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son", page 198)

"In time, in due time."
("The Lie", page 233)

I still catch myself feeling blue about things that don't matter anymore.
("Unready to Wear", page 237)

Like a plain damn fool, I believed them.
("Unready to Wear", page 239)

"You couldn't get along without fear.  That's the only skill you've got -- how to scare
yourselves and other people into doing things." 
("Unready to Wear", page 249)

"You are better than you think," he said.  "A-one, a-two, a-three."
("The Kid Nobody Could Handle", page 257)

"When the cat's away," said Hemholtz, "this mouse gets lonely."
("The Kid Nobody Could Handle", page 261)


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Slaughterhouse Five

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Happy Birthday, Wanda June

Take care of your body, yes!  But don't become a bender of horseshoes and railroad spikes.
Don't become obsessed by your musculature.  Any one of these poor, dead animals here was a
thousand times the athlete you can ever hope to be.  Their magic was in their muscles.  Your
magic is in your brains.
(Page 21)

We adjust to what there is to adjust to.
(Page 90)

I could carve a better man out of a banana!
(Page 107)

You and your damned bedside manner and your damned little black bag full of miracles.  You know
who filled that bag for you?  Not Alice-sit-by-the-fires like yourself.  Men with guts filled
it, by God  -- men with guts enough to pay the price for miracles -- suffering, ingratitude,
loneliness, death--
(Page 107)

[Jesus Christ has] got a blue-and-gold warm-up jacket that he wears.  You know what it says on
the back?  "Pontius Pilate Athletic Club."  Most people don't get it.  Most people think there
really
is a Pontius Pilate Athletic Club.
(Page 136)

The deepest sort of respect is uncontrollable fear.
(Paraphrase, page 142)

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Breakfast of Champions

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Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons

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Slapstick

	Love is where you find it.  I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I 
think it can often be poisonous.
	I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say
to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common
decency."
(page 3)

	Eliza and I believed then what I believe even now:  That life can be painless, 
provided there is sufficient peacefulness for a dozen or so rituals to be repeated simply
endlessly.
	Life, ideally, I think, should be like the Minuet or the Virginia Reel or the
Turkey Trot, something easily mastered in a dancing school.
(page 44)

	"Buh," said Eliza.
	"Duh," I said.
(page 78)

I wish Melody what our parents once wished Eliza and me: A short but happy life on an 
asteroid.
(page 83)

If I drank too much, I might spill the beans to everybody: That the life that awaits us
after death is infinitely more tiresome than this one.
(page 85)

I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as
salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and
realizing that that person is a malicious lunatic.
(page 90)

"Paddle your own canoe."
(page 93)

"'Take no thought for the morrow,'" I told her, "'for the morrow shall take thought for 
the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'"
(page 207)

"History is merely a list of surprises," I said.  "It can only prepare us to be surprised
yet again.  Please write that down."
(page 226)

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Jailbird

Yes -- Kilgore Trout is back again.  He could not make it on the outside.  That is no disgrace.
A lot of good people can't make it on the outside.
(Page 9)

Life goes on, yes - and a fool and his self-respect are soon parted, perhaps never to be
reunited,
even on Judgment Day.
(Page 45)

"Here's to God Almighty, the laziest man in town."
(Page 75)

The President should then order an investigation of National Guard units everywhere, to discover
if such civilians in soldiers' costumes were in fact to be trusted with live ammunition when
controlling unarmed crowds.
(Pages 75-76)

He then quoted the harrowing thing that Jesus, according to Saint Matthew, had promised to say
in the Person of God to sinners on Judgment Day.
	This is it: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil
and
his angels."
	These words appalled me then, and they appall me now.  They are surely the inspiration
for the notorious cruelty of Christians.
(Pages 80-81)

It is a hard daydream to let go of - that one has friends.
(Page 83)

	"It's all right," I said.
	"That's what you say about everything," Clyde complained.  "No matter what it is, you
say, 'It's all right.'"
	"It usually is," I said.
(Page 91)

"Served nobody right, Mr. Starbuck," she said.
(Page 141)

	"Everybody says, 'Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,' and you start wondering what it is,
and
what's so wonderful about it."
	"You make people happy with your beauty," said her grandmother.
	"You certainly make me happy with it," I said.
	Sarah laughed.  "It's so silly," she said.  "It's so dumb," she said.
	"Perhaps you shouldn't think about it so much," said her grandmother.
	"That's like telling a midget to stop thinking about being a midget," said Sarah, and
she
laughed again.
	"You should stop saying everything is silly and dumb," said her grandmother.
	"Everything is silly and dumb," said Sarah.
	"You will learn differently as you grow older," her grandmother promised.
	"I think everybody older just pretends to know what's going on, and it's all so serious
and wonderful," said Sarah.  "Older people haven't really found out anything new that I don't
know.  Maybe if people didn't get so serious when they got older, we wouldn't have a depression
now."
(Pages 142-143)

"That is the story of my life.  I always go in the wrong door first."
(Page 147)

I will say further, as an officer of an enormous international conglomerate, that nobody who is
doing well in this economy ever even wonders what is really going on.
(Page 149)

"Hello and goodbye."  What else is there to say?  Our language is much larger than it needs to
be.
(Page 275)

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Palm Sunday

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Deadeye Dick

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Galápagos

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Bluebeard

	Paul Slazinger says, incidentally, that the human condition can be summed up in just
one word, and this is the word:  Embarrassment.
(Page 12)

	"What good is 'Hello'?" she said.
	She stopped me in my tracks.  "I've always thought it was better than nothing," I said,
"but I could be wrong."
	"What does 'Hello' mean?" she said.
	And I said, "I had always understood it to mean "Hello.'"
	"Well, it doesn't," she said.  "It means, 'Don't talk about anything important.'  It
means,
"I'm smiling but not listening, so just go away.'"
(Page 13)

	"Who are those people and what am I doing here?" he might say, with cowboys and
Chinese and Indians passing by outside.
(Page 16)

	"What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?"
(Page 35)
 
	But then Little John came home in a body bag.
(Page 277)

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Hocus Pocus

[...] and as full of excrement as a Christmas turkey [...]
(Page 3)

[...] "when the excrement hit the air-conditioning."
(Page 4)

	Booby traps everywhere.
(Page 5)

	Our children, full-grown now, can never forgive us for reproducing.  What a mess.
(Page 5)

"Keep your hat on.  We could wind up miles from here."
(page 21)

"[...]see the Nigger fly the airplane."
(page 68)

	"Life's a bad dream," he said.  "Do you know that?"
(page 72)

She eventually commited suicide.  She finally found life too embarrassing.
(page 94)

"Being an American means never having to say you're sorry."
(page 94)

The truth can be very funny in an awful way, especially as it relates to greed and hipocrisy.
(page 115)

	Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, I remember, which he said should be carved in big
letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon the the flying-saucer people to find, was this:
   WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT,
BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP.
	Only he didn't say "doggone."
(pages 143-144)

We are impossibly conceited animals, and actually as dumb as heck.  Ask any teacher.  You don't
even have to ask a teacher.  Ask anybody.  Dogs and cats are smarter than we are.
(page 146)

All nations bigger than Denmark are crocks of doo-doo.
(page 147)

	If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might
be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to
die for other people's vanity and foolishness.
(page 151)

I hand't been working as a teacher at Athena very long before it occured to me that I had almost
certainly killed more people than had the mass murderer Alton Darwin or anybody else serving
time there.  That didn't trouble me, and it still doesn't.  I just think it is interesting.
	It is like an old movie.  Does that mean that something is wrong with me?
(pages 154-155)

	"All the same," he said serenely.  "All the same, all the same."
(page 156)

	It must have been politics.
(page 176)

The author never said why the Elders thought the spread of life was such a hot idea.  I don't
blame him.  I can't think of any strong arguments in favor of it.  To me, wanting every
habitable planet to be inhabitited is like wanting everybody to have athlete's foot.
(page 199)

	"So now we count dollars the way you used to count bodies," he said.  "What does that
bring us closer to?  What does it mean?  We should do with those dollars what you did with the
bodies.  Bury them and forget them!  You were luckier with your bodies than we are with all
our dollars."
	"How so?" I said.
	"All anybody can do with bodies is burn them or bury them," he said.  "There isn't any
nightmare afterwards, when you have to invest them and make them grow."
(page 238)

	And the worst flaw is that we're just plain dumb.  Admit it!
(page 241)

I think that any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever the people who have all
our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today.
(pages 242-243)

"What is this place and who are these people, and what am I doing here?"
(page 259)

	"At least we still have freedom of speech," I said.
	And she said, "That isn't something somebody else gives you.  That's something you have
to give yourself."
(page 288)

	How embarrassing to be human.
(page 311)

	Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we
deserve to conquer the universe.
(page 324)

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Fates Worse than Death

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Timequake