Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.was an American author. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth11 November 1922
CountryUnited States of America
fall people stories
All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.
mistake stealing abraham
It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.
thinking usual storytelling
It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life.
mad being-old
I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK.
believe airplane army
I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.
scary hocus-pocus facts
If facts weren't funny, or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them.
character mines has-beens
Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.
dream littles kind
I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream.
people community causes
What we will be seeking ... for the rest of our lives will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity.
thinking important persons
I think that scientific persons of the future will scoff at scientific persons of the present. They will scoff because scientific persons of the present thought so many important things were superstitious.
thinking frustration would-be
I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.
art say-anything social
Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.
fighting self progress
You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.
stupid writing simple
A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.