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
country lying past
The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?
ideas evil world
It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world — in the form of bad ideas.
memorable thinking mind
I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.
pain struggle thinking
I think... it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain.'
love inspirational broken-heart
Don't be reckless with other peoples hearts. And don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.
years iraq giving
I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy - because we're experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that's what's going on now.
life fighting common-decency
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."
life love-is
Love is where you find it.
miracle crowds looks
Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.
juicy teeth pears
He ate a pear. It was a hard one. It fought back against his grinding teeth. It snapped in juicy protest.
people american-universities university
Everybody knows that the dumbest people in any American university are in the education department, and English after that.
dream painter knows
I'm a painter in my dreams, you know.
brain looks stories
In the era of big brains, life stories could end up any which way. Look at mine.
scratches building jokes
A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.