Kurt Vonnegut

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(George Santayana)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."

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

"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?"

"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."

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

"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?"

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDEDFOR THE EXISTENCE OF GODWAS MUSIC"

"A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo."

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDEDFOR THE EXISTENCE OF GODWAS MUSIC"

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

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

"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."

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

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

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."

"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?"

"I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind."

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."

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

"The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected."