Kurt Vonnegut on Life

"The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about."

"I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex."

"This is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes."

"She was an alcoholic. I didn't blame myself for that. The worst problem in the life of any alcoholic is alcohol."

"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."

"Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery."

"If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke."

"You couldn't help that you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same."

"What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?"

"In case you haven’t noticed, we … dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake."

"My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."

"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental."

"Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be."

"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."

"As in my other works of fiction: All persons living and dead are purely coincidental, and should not be construed. No names have been changed in order to protect the innocent. Angels protect the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine."

"Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn — so he or she can see how it ends. Even Pitecanthropus erectus and Australopithecus and Sinanthropus pekensis and the Neanderthalers are back on Earth — to see how it ends. They're all on Times Square — making change for peepshows. Or recruiting Marines."

"When I was a naive young recruit in Spain, I used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off statues and defecated into grand pianos. I now understand: it was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform — uncontrollable fear."

"One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of."

"It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they're not intelligent enough. It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry — or laugh."

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. 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. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."