Philip

“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. [...] And it strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that a man can always solve his problems. There is an implication that if you just have a little more energy, a little more fight, the problem can always be solved. That is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“And contrast Mary Kathleen, if you will, with my wife Ruth, the Ophelia of the death camps, who believed that even the most intelligent human beings were so stupid that they could only make things worse by speaking their minds. It was thinkers, after all, who had set up the death camps. Setting up a death camp, with its railroad sidings and its around-the-clock crematoria, was not something a moron could do. Neither could a moron explain why a death camp was ultimately humane.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

“It's all right,' she said. 'You couldn't help it 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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

“Thinking the guy up ahead knows what he's doing is the most dangerous religion there is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons