Best Kurt Vonnegut Quotes & Sayings

People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead. — Kurt Vonnegut

Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are. — Kurt Vonnegut

I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower. — Lorde

Standing among all those tiny, wavering lights, I felt as though I were God, up to my knees in the Milky Way. — Kurt Vonnegut

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well- read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
SO I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
-Kurt Vonnegut "A man without a country" p. 132 — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Although Kurt Vonnegut may not be considered a humor writer, 'Breakfast of Champions' is one of the funniest books I've ever read. — Justin Halpern

Diversity is a strength. It's like the shrieking radios permanently attached to bright people's ears in the Kurt Vonnegut story "Harrison Bergeron," to prevent them from using their superior intelligence. Contrary to everything you've heard, never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a disaster. — Ann Coulter

Why should I bother with made-up games when there are so many real ones going on? — Kurt Vonnegut

[ ... ] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [ ... ] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic of late. It's as if the big issues (Does God exist? from whence springs decency? what sort of species is Homo Sapiens?) were either settled or not worth discusssing, and serious writers should therefore confine themselves to their various ethnic heritages and interpersonal relationships. — James K. Morrow

I don't know'," he said. "Those three words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage." And with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it was that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of standards. It was bout quality in the author's craftsmanship. — John William Tuohy

The problem with thinking up a new and original idea within a novel is that you have to make sure that Kurt Vonnegut did not already think of it. — Meena Kandasamy

For us the Dresden Dolls were porcelain dolls that were made in that city at the time, that is what they were to us, and also a reference in Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, and in a song by The Fall. — Brian Viglione

I congratulate you people on being in the raging mainstream of the arts. It is commercial artists like myself who operate in the backwaters. I inhabit still, tepid waters clogged with dollar bills. I never see people. I've forgotten all about them.
Guard yourself at all times. A lot of people believe that beauty is some kind of conspiracy
along with friendly laughter and peace.
Cheers
(Signed)
Kurt Vonnegut — Kurt Vonnegut

If there is to be no ceiling on the amount of money a man can take out of our economy, then concomitantly there can be no foundation below which a human being cannot sink. What capitalists must realize is that you are fighting to make capitalism survive, not destroy it; you are fighting to eliminate the seeds of destruction inherent in the status quo."
~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's letter to Don Matchan, 27 April 1947 — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Society is more concerned with material possessions than it is with the true love and compassion of another human being. — Kurt Vonnegut

For example, if she joined the book club - there was always a book club - and hung out with them, her choice of guys would be limited to the dark and moody Chuck Palahniuk/Kurt Vonnegut/Life-Sucks-and-Then-You-Die brooders. — Pete Hautman