Kurt Vonnegut

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

"Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human."

"Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber."

"Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it."

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

"Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber."

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward."

"I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool."

"Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic."

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything."

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"

"You are better than you think. A-one, a-two a-three."

"I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how tobecome a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt yourparents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you cando is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestitehermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you'vebeen to college."

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake."

"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."

"Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer."

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

"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."

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

"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?"