1,579 Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlighenment and comfort at top speed

A writer off-guard since the materials with which he works are so dangerous can expect agony as quick as a thunderclap.

Sculptors feel that somebody else is using their hands, that they couldn’t possibly be doing this.

And God created every living creaturethat now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak.God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke.Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.“Certainly,” said man.“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And Hewent away.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Iliad and The Odyssey," "Crime and Punishment," the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" — are all about what a bummer it is to be a ...human being?

It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free.

Nothing ever really ends. That’s the horrible part of being in the short-story business—you have to be a real expert on ends. Nothing in real life ends. ‘Millicent at last understands.’ Nobody ever understands.