Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.
In case you haven’t noticed, we…dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything. Piece of cake.
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
Everything you need to know about life is in "The Brothers Karamazov"
The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.
(Speaking at Isaac Asimov's funeral) Isaac is in heaven now, that was the funniest thing I could have said to a crowd of Humanists. God Forbid, Should I pass on sometime, may all of you say that Kurt is in Heaven too.
Cold Turkey
By Kurt Vonnegut (from In These Times)
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
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When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done. People did not like it here".
Requiem- Kurt Vonnegut
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