Quote

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.

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.
Needs
Brothers
Life
Anymore
Brother
Teach
Everything
Book
Need
Enough
Dostoyevsky

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
One thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
If facts weren't funny, or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I love you, Eliza,” I said. She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t like it.” “Why not?” I said. “It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head,” she said. “It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you, too’?
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
See the cat? See the cradle?
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I apologize because of the terrible mess the planet is in. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any 'Good Old Days,' there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, 'Don't look at me. I just got here myself.'
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
...Skyscraper National Park
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
I'm eighty-three and I've been smoking since I was eleven. I'm suing the cigarette company because it promised to kill me and it hasn't.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
You know what truth is? [...] It's some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, Yeah, yeah - ain't it the truth?
Kurt Vonnegut
Image
If I was ever to have a child, this is what I'd tell it: 'Child,' I'd say, 'don't never mess with time. Keep now now and then then. And if you ever get lost in thick smoke, child, set still till it clears. Set still till you can see where you are and where you been and where you're going, child.
Kurt Vonnegut