Kurt Vonnegut

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers — joined in the serious business of keeping our food, shelter, clothing and loved ones from combining with oxygen."

"You must all take instructions from me!" the conscience shrieks, in effect, to all the other mental processes. The other processes try it for a while, note that the conscience is unappeased, that it continues to shriek, and they note, too, that the outside world has not been even microscopically improved by the unselfish acts the conscience has demanded. They rebel at last. They pitch the tyrannous conscience down an oubliette, weld shut the manhole cover of that dark dungeon. They can hear the conscience no more. In the sweet silence, the mental processes look about for a new leader, and the leader most prompt to appear whenever the conscience is stilled, Enlightened Self-interest, does appear. Enlightened Self-interest gives them a flag, which they adore on sight. It is essentially the black and white Jolly Roger, with these words written beneath the skull and crossbones, The hell with you, Jack, Ive got mine!"

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. Its hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Its round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, youve got about a hundred years here. Theres only one rule that I know of, babies — "God damn it, youve got to be kind."

"The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."

"The village would never accept it. It has a policy of never accepting anything. As a happy consequence, it changes about as fast as the rules of chess."

"Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles away from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And everyday my government gives me a count of corpses created by the military service in Vietnam. So it goes. My father died many years ago now — of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust."

"I dont like film. Film is too clankingly real, too permanent, too industrial for me. … 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 doesnt create illusions. It makes them impossible. Its a bullying form of reality, like the model rooms in the furniture department of Bloomingdales."

"Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind."

"It was Trouts fantasy that somebody would be outraged by the footprints. This would give him the opportunity to reply grandly, "What is it that offends you so? I am simply using mans first printing press. You are reading a bold and universal headline which says ,I am here, I am here, I am here.""

"Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants."

"Listen: The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldnt let her. "Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me. "The big show is inside my head," I said"

"I love you sons of bitches. Youre all I read any more. Youre the only ones wholl talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one thatll last for billions of years. Youre the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. Youre the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell."