Kurt Vonnegut: What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must...

If Jesus was alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.

Kurt Vonnegut

progress ideas jesus

I was clasified as a 'Science Fiction' writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady.

Kurt Vonnegut

fiction-writers science-fiction fiction

With words alone, Gail Godwin has created an important piece of music about a love which death can only increase and deepen. Yes, and Frances Halsband's illustrations are a haunting countermelody.

Kurt Vonnegut

haunting illustration important

That's what is was to be young - to be enthusiastic rather than envious about the good work other people could do.

Kurt Vonnegut

envious good-work people

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

Kurt Vonnegut

wonder sometimes looks

I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.

Kurt Vonnegut

grandchildren dream people

[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.

Kurt Vonnegut

mountain writing thinking

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

Kurt Vonnegut

drug make-you-think thinking

I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.

Kurt Vonnegut

wife beautiful

Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.

Kurt Vonnegut

teeth missing thinking

That's the secret of how to enjoy writing and how to make yourself meet high standards," said Mrs. Berman. "You don't write for the whole world, and you don't write for ten people, or two. You write for just one person.

Kurt Vonnegut

writing two people

No good at life, but very funny sometimes with the commentary.

Kurt Vonnegut

commentary sometimes

Jokes have to be quite naked to be understood. They have to be quite simple.

Kurt Vonnegut

understood naked simple

You say what you have to say. But you have to learn to say it in such a way that the reader can see what you mean.

Kurt Vonnegut

reader mean way

You can only be funny if you have matters of great importance on your mind.

Kurt Vonnegut

importance matter mind

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

Kurt Vonnegut

matter goes-on writing

Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.

Kurt Vonnegut

jogging exercise laughing

That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses. Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

Kurt Vonnegut

hurt baby mean

Indianapolis, Indiana is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for the murder of an Indian. The kind of people who'll hang a white man for murdering an Indian--that's the kind of people for me.

Kurt Vonnegut

white-man men america

Educate yourself, welcome life's messiness, read Chekhov, avoid becoming an architect at all costs.

Kurt Vonnegut

welcome becoming cost

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