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Book Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

39 Book quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

All Book quotes Kurt Vonnegut’s page

Kurt Vonnegut points out that many people fear books like germs, but he thinks stories should be flexible, not a strict plan. He describes his works as mosaics of jokes and sometimes as a quest, like a war book that he calls a failure on purpose. He also mentions how big story arcs make us expect huge ups and downs.

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Never index your own book.

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Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.

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“Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”

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Nothing in this book is true.

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People who are wary of what they might find in a book if they opened one are right to be.

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“people who are wary of what they might find in a book if they opened 1 are right to be”

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That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes.

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There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.

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“I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.”

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I go on many thrilling adventures and wondrous, profound escapades through books.

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I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel…

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Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book…

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There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor…

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Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be…

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“Everybody was legally alive now. Before the got their names and numbers in that book, they were missing in action and probably…

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“Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.”

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There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books…

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Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing…

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But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to…

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A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes…

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“Don’t give up on books. They feel so good—their friendly heft. The sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with…

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“The imagination circuit is taught to respond to the most minimal of cues. A book is an arrangement of 26 phonetic symbols,…

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“Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its…

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How important my books are or anybody's books are, I don't know. I don't think they are terribly important I think that…

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The book was Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout. It was about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because…

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“An American near Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains. Moments later he said, “There they go, there they…

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I'm eighty-three and homeless. It was the same when World War II ended. The Army kept me on because I could type,…

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There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students…

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While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this…

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“I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn’t have to write at all anymore if I didn’t want to. It was…

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Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much…

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I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's…

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I don't plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn't be a closed system - it's a quest.

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“[Books] were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by…

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The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million…

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“I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and…

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I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere…

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My country is in ruins. So I'm a fish in a poisoned fishbowl. I'm mostly just heartsick about this. There should have…

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“The name of the book was The Big Board. He got a few paragraphs into it, and then he realized that he…

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More by Kurt Vonnegut

“You must bloom as a writer and I must bloom as a painter. Everything else about us is uninteresting.”

“People aren't supposed to look back.”

“Have a good nap, did you?” said the porter. “Yes,” said Billy. “Man,” said the porter, “you sure had a hard-on.”

“I told him that if we doubted that we are demons in Hell, he should read The Mysterious Stranger, which Mark Twain wrote in…

“Thomas Jefferson High School [..] His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of the world’s greatest theoreticians on…

“I had a certain amount of skill as a dramatist, and Dr. Goebbels wanted me to use it”

I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.

“The town was Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.”

“Her face was one of a kind, a surprising variation that made observers think, Yes--that would be another very nice way for people to…

“You finally fell in love, I see,” said Salo. “Only an Earthling year ago,” said Constant. “It took us that long to realize that…

“Like all Earthlings at the point of death, Mary Young sent faint reminders of herself to those who had known her. She released a…

“And contrast Mary Kathleen, if you will, with my wife Ruth, the Ophelia of the death camps, who believed that even the most intelligent…

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if,…

“They were going back to the slaughterhouse for souvenirs of the war.”

“There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty…