Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night (1961)

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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Kurt Vonnegut
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

Kurt Vonnegut
We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

Kurt Vonnegut
I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me!

Kurt Vonnegut
"You hate America, don't you?" she said.
"That would be as silly as loving it," I said. "It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will."

Kurt Vonnegut
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.

Kurt Vonnegut
"All people are insane," he said. "They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons."

Kurt Vonnegut
The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.

Kurt Vonnegut
I love you, because the love you gave me was the only love I've ever had, the only love I ever will have

Kurt Vonnegut
We'd been apart so long—I'd been dead so long," she said in English. "I thought surely you'd built a new life, with no room in it for me. I'd hoped that." "My life is nothing but room for you." I said. "It could never be filled by anyone but you.

Kurt Vonnegut
Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.

Kurt Vonnegut
Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.

Kurt Vonnegut
What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that flickered out.

Kurt Vonnegut
Here lies Howard Campbell's essence,
Freed from his body's noisome nuisance.
His body, empty, prowls the earth,
Earning what a body's worth.
If his body and his essence remain apart,
Burn his body, but spare this, his heart.

Kurt Vonnegut
The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art.

Kurt Vonnegut
If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut
Oh, God — the lives people try to lead. Oh, God — what a world they try to lead them in.

Kurt Vonnegut
Drawn crudely in the dust of three window-panes were a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes. I had drawn the three symbols weeks before, at the conclusion of an argument about patriotism with Kraft. I had given a hearty cheer for each symbol, demonstrating to Kraft the meaning of patriotism to, respectively, a Nazi, a Communist, and an American. "Hooray, hooray, hooray," I'd said.

Kurt Vonnegut