I don't plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn't be a closed system - it's a quest. Kurt Vonnegut More Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut More Quotes From Kurt Vonnegut Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease. Kurt Vonnegut disease causes ideas The Chicago City News Bureau was a tripwire for all the newspapers in town when I was there, and there were five papers, I think. We were out all the time around the clock and every time we came across a really juicy murder or scandal or whatever, they'd send the big time reporters and photographers, otherwise they'd run our stories. So that's what I was doing, and I was going to university at the same time. Kurt Vonnegut cities running thinking The computer revolution has allowed white-collar criminals to do what the Mob would have loved to do - put a pawnshop and a loan shark in every home! Kurt Vonnegut sharks white home The death of a library, any library, suggests that the community has lost its soul. Kurt Vonnegut library community soul The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky—as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment. Kurt Vonnegut entertainment eye sky When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, "You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that? Kurt Vonnegut catholic dad thinking The worst thing about film, from my point of view, is that it cripples illusions which I have encouraged people to create in their heads. Film doesn't create illusion. It makes them impossible. It is a bullying form of reality, like the model rooms in the furniture department of Bloomingdale's. Kurt Vonnegut bullying views reality Trout was petrified there on Forty-second Street. It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth. Kurt Vonnegut iron-will trout earth She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind. Kurt Vonnegut too-much moments people There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students read this book with good ideas or that book with good ideas until that's where we get our ideas. We don't think them; we read them in books. I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, anger about what our planet is. I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas. Kurt Vonnegut writing teacher book You realize, of course, that everything I say is horseshit. Kurt Vonnegut courses realizing If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice. Kurt Vonnegut slaughterhouse-five grateful nice We don't make bicycles anymore. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everyone to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan. Kurt Vonnegut practice giving men He wanted to talk to them, if he could, to discover whether they had truths about life which he had never heard before. Here is what he hoped new truths might do for him: enable him to laugh at his troubles, to go on living, and to keep out of the North Wing of the Midland County General Hospital, which was for lunatics. Kurt Vonnegut goes-on wings laughing I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home. Kurt Vonnegut doing-good found home But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about. Kurt Vonnegut spiritual sorry book Dr. Brainard Keyes Bullard, President of Wyandotte College, said in an address tonight that most of the worlds ills can be traced to the fact that Mans knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world. Kurt Vonnegut drs president college The biggest truth to face now - what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life - is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren. Kurt Vonnegut grandchildren dream thinking I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima. Kurt Vonnegut color taken brother Vietnam was an exercise in mistaken idealism Iraq in cynical money-making. And there's no optimism or idealism now -- Americans are tired of knowledge. Our leaders, the C-students from Yale, know this. We're proud of being ignorant that leaves virtue at our core. We aren't frazzled by knowledge like foreigners, so we can be trusted. Kurt Vonnegut tired yale exercise
