1,579 Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

The brainless serenity of charwomen and janitors working late at night came over us. In a messy world we were at least making our little corner clean.

I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies.

Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

I wanted all thingsTo seem to make some sense,So we could all be happy, yes,Instead of tense.And I made up liesSo that they all fit nice,And I made this sad worldA par-a-dise.