Quotations by:
    Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr.


The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
“Despite Tough Guys, Life Is Not the Only School for Real Novelists,” New York Times (1999-05-24)
    (Source)

Part of the Times "Writers on Writing" series.

In Man Without a Country, ch. 3 "Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing" (2005), Vonnegut expanded on this:

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.

 
Added on 6-Apr-23 | Last updated 6-Apr-23
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What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. The child watching TV loves these people, you know — they’re in color, and they’re talking to the child. Why wouldn’t a child relate to these people? And you know, if you can’t sleep at 3 o’clock in the morning, you can turn on a switch, and there are your friends and relatives, and they obviously like you. And they’re charming. Who wouldn’t want Peter Jennings for a relative? This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
“The Salon Interview: Kurt Vonnegut,” interview by Frank Houston, Salon (8 Oct 1999)
    (Source)
 
Added on 21-Nov-22 | Last updated 14-Nov-22
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Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, and don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 1-Feb-04
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For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
A Man Without A Country, ch. 9 (2005)
    (Source)

The Beatitudes (Matthew 5).
 
Added on 2-Apr-18 | Last updated 6-Apr-23
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Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Cat’s Cradle, ch. 88 [Bokonon] (1963)
    (Source)
 
Added on 17-Nov-23 | Last updated 17-Nov-23
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Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Hocus Pocus (1990)
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Added on 18-Aug-17 | Last updated 14-Jan-22
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Speaking of atheism, I remember one time when Jack Patton and I went to a sermon in Vietnam delivered by the highest-ranking Chaplain in the Army. He was a General.
The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes.
I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, “There’s a Chaplain who never visited the front.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Hocus Pocus, ch. 24 (1990)
    (Source)
 
Added on 1-Nov-23 | Last updated 1-Nov-23
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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 of making a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Man Without a Country, ch. 3 “Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing” (2005)
    (Source)
 
Added on 8-Jun-23 | Last updated 8-Jun-23
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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Mother Night, Introduction (1961)
    (Source)

See Hawthorne.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 28-Dec-21
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The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Slaughterhouse-Five, ch. 2 (1969)
 
Added on 15-Jan-08 | Last updated 15-Jan-08
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But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Lecture
    (Source)
 
Added on 24-Aug-17 | Last updated 24-Aug-17
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Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Letter to his daughter, Nanny (1975)
 
Added on 4-Dec-12 | Last updated 4-Dec-12
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