Rumfoord Quotes & Sayings

Winston Niles Rumfoord was something else again - morally, spatially, socially, sexually, and electrically. — Kurt Vonnegut

But, well-endowed as Mrs. Rumfoord was, she still did troubled things like chaining a dog's skeleton to the wall, like having the gates of the estate bricked up, like letting the famous formal gardens turn into New England jungle. The moral: Money, position, health, handsomeness and talent aren't everything. — Kurt Vonnegut

The town was Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way. The walls were those of the Rumfoord estate. — Kurt Vonnegut

Professor Rumfoord said frightful things about Billy within Billy's hearing, confident that Billy no longer had any brain at all. "Why don't they let him die?" he asked Lily. "I don't know," she said. "That's not a human being anymore. Doctors are for human beings. — Kurt Vonnegut

Said Rumfoord. I dared her to invite you, — Kurt Vonnegut

It wasn't any ordinary guessing game," said Rumfoord. "It was about how long the human race was going to last. I thought that might sort of give you more perspective about your own problems." "The — Kurt Vonnegut

Americans have finally heard about Dresden," said Rumfoord, twenty-three years after the raid. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

So he stayed in Newport for a while to see if he had a destiny there. He worked as a gardener and carpenter on the famous Rumfoord Estate. — Kurt Vonnegut

Everything Rumfoord did he did with style, making all mankind look good. Everything Constant did he did in style - aggressively, loudly, childishly, wastefully - making himself and mankind look bad. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The name of the new religion," said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. — Kurt Vonnegut

The two chief teachings of this religion are these," said Rumfoord: "Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God. "Why — Kurt Vonnegut

The human race is a scummy thing, and so is Earth, and so are you. — Kurt Vonnegut

Hiroshima. So I've got to put something about it in my book. From the official Air Force standpoint, it'll all be new." "Why would they keep it a secret so long?" said Lily. "For fear that a lot of bleeding hearts," said Rumfoord, "might not think it was such a wonderful thing to do." It was now that Billy Pilgrim spoke up intelligently. "I was there," he said. — Kurt Vonnegut

Echolalia is a mental disease which makes people immediately repeat things that well people around them say. But Billy didn't really have it. Rumfoord simply insisted, for his own comfort, that Billy had it. Rumfoord was thinking in a military manner: that an inconvenient person, one whose death he wished for very much, for practical reasons, was suffering from a repulsive disease. — Kurt Vonnegut

It was difficult for Rumfoord to take Billy seriously, since Rumfoord had so long considered Billy a repulsive non-person who would be much better off dead. Now, with Billy speaking clearly and to the point, Rumfoord's ears wanted to treat the words as a foreign language that was not worth learning. "What did he say?" said Rumfoord. Lily had to serve as an interpreter. "He said he was there," she explained. "He was where?" "I don't know," said Lily. "Where were you?" she asked Billy. "Dresden," said Billy. — Kurt Vonnegut

No, no
no pity, please," said Rumfoord, stepping back, afraid of being touched. "It's a very good thing, really. I'll be seeing lots of new things, a lot of new creatures." He tried to smile. "One gets tired, you know, being caught up in the monotonous clockwork of the Solar System." He laughed harshly. "After all," he said, "it isn't as though I were dying or something. Everything that ever was always will be, and everything that ever will be always was." He shook his head quickly, and cast away a tear he hadn't known was on his eyelid. — Kurt Vonnegut

It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. "I know," said Billy. "That's war." "I know. I'm not complaining." "It must have been hell on the ground." "It was," said Billy Pilgrim. "Pity the men who had to do it." "I do." "You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground." "It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Look forward to being really in love for the first time, Bea," said Rumfoord. "Look forward to behaving aristocratically without any outward proofs of your aristocracy.Look forward to having nothing but the dignity and intelligence and tenderness that God gave you - look forward to taking those materials and nothing else, and making something exquisite with them. — Kurt Vonnegut

Constant was a male and Mrs. Rumfoord was a female, and Constant imagined that he had the means of demonstrating, if given the opportunity, his unquestionable superiority. — Kurt Vonnegut

Constant, having just heard from Rumfoord that he was to be mated to Rumfoord's wife on Mars, looked away from Rumfoord to the museum of remains along one wall. — Kurt Vonnegut

Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant's father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" at any price. The old man had punished Mona Lisa by having her used in an advertising campaign for suppositories. It was the free-enterprise way of handling beauty that threatened to get the upper hand. — Kurt Vonnegut

Apt and poetic though this was, it was simply too bleak to read at a funeral. Instead I settled on Rumfoord's farewell speech on page 2007, which starts: "I am not dying. I am merely taking my leave of the solar system," and ends: "I shall always be here. I shall always be wherever I've been. — Gavin Extence