austyn > austyn's Quotes

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The nicest veterans...the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is just an illusion 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, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“There were about twenty other Americans in there, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall, staring into the flames—thinking whatever there was to think, which was zero.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“There was a tiny plume of smoke at infinity. There was a battle there. People were dying there. So it goes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“Human beings in there were excreting into steel helmets which were passed to the people at the ventilators, who dumped them. Billy was a dumper. The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: 'Why me?'
'That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?'
'Yes.' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Practically nobody on Earth is an American.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“We know how the Universe ends—' said the guide, 'and Earth has nothing to do with it, except it gets wiped out, too.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“So Billy experiences death for a while. It is simply violet light and a hum. There isn’t anybody else there. Not even Billy Pilgrim is there.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Billy asked them in English what it was they wanted, and they at once scolded him in English for the condition of the horses. They made Billy get out of the wagon and come look at the horses. When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin - who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“We are all humans; we all wake up messy and confused.”
― Nina LaCour, Watch Over Me

“I'm learning that it's good to think about what scares you. To bring it into the light. Even to hold it in your hands, if you can, and feel how it can't hurt you anymore. To think of it and say, "I am not afraid.'"

Lee watched me so closely. I could tell he understood.

'It takes away its power, to look at it that way.”
― Nina LaCour, Watch Over Me

“I wanted a bird-ghost. Night fell and I returned to my cabin with the record under my arm, carrying the player by the handle, watching for a glowing, flying thing.

I wanted a kind of logic. A reason. An assurance that things worked the way they were supposed to. Creatures lived and they died and sometimes they returned in a different form. Sometimes they haunted the living, and sometimes they let us be.”
― Nina LaCour, Watch Over Me

“The trick is not to let the line intimidate you. Everyone can wait a few minutes for flowers. There's no rush.”
― Nina LaCour, Watch Over Me

“I had been haunting myself as punishment, I supposed. But it was difficult, when ghosts were everywhere, to figure out what was real and what was imagined.”
― Nina LaCour, Watch Over Me

“I was surprised, at first, by her sadness. I had thought she felt only delight—but sadness, of course, was a feeling all of us have always known.”
― Nina LaCour, Watch Over Me