Kurt Vonnegut Player Piano Quotes & Sayings

All share complicity in the destruction of that much under-rated phenomenon called liberty. — Barbara Amiel

You've got to break through this idea of being light as a ballerina. The heavier you'll feel, the lighter you'll look. — Gelsey Kirkland

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place. — Kurt Vonnegut

Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what. — Kurt Vonnegut

The mind generally takes up various objects, runs into all sorts of things. That is the lower state. There is a higher state of the mind, when it takes up one object and excludes all others. — Swami Vivekananda

The students I've been with these twenty years are looking for a world where it becomes a little easier to love and a lot harder to hate, where learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our hearts, minds, time, and money to a commitment that the force of love, the force of truth, the force of justice, and the force of organized resistance to corrupt power are seen as sane and the force of fists, guns, armies, and bombs insane. — Colman McCarthy

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her. — Rodney Dangerfield

He remembered his cry of the night before: We must meet in the middle of the Bridge! — Kurt Vonnegut

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat's Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like:
Player Piano B
The Sirens of Titan A
Mother Night A
Cat's Cradle A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A
Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June D
Breakfast of Champions C
Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C
Slapstick D
Jailbird A
Palm Sunday C — Kurt Vonnegut

Which god ruled your nameyear?"
"Sewing."
She squinted, then laughed.
He smiled a little, yet said, "You shouldn't laugh."
She laughed harder.
"Actually, I sew quite well. — Marie Rutkoski