Quote

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

Kurt Vonnegut

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Kurt Vonnegut
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: November 11
Died: 2007
Died: April 14
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Kurt Vonnegut
Jr.
Deep
Present
Five
Slaughter
Keep
Healing
Much
Wide
Mines
Mine
Asked

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Out in the world I go! Muggers! Autograph hounds! Junkies! People with real jobs! Maybe an easy lay! United Nation functionaries and diplomats!
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing. In the water I am beautiful.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere else have I found such thoughtful and literate reportage on the state of the American soul, as that soul makes itself known in the books we write.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I'm wild again, beguiled again, a whimpering, simpering child again. Bewitched, bothered, bewildered am I.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
You don't do art for any other reason than to help your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut