Kurt Vonnegut Life Quotations

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow - whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it.

How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

Unannounced changes in life's itinerary are like dancing lessons from God.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Well here you are, there it is, THIS is what it's all about.

We'd been apart so long--I'd been dead so long," she said in English. "I thought surely you'd built a new life, with no room in it for me. I'd hoped that." "My life is nothing but room for you." I said. "It could never be filled by anyone but you.

I urge you to please notice when you are happy.

It is a sobering thought that Gomer Pyle and the Beverly Hillbillies may be among our chief interstellar emissaries.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.

I am better now. Word of honour: I am better now.

If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

I'd like to teach Iraq about Democracy because we're so experienced with it. First they should know that after 100 years they should free their slaves. Then after 150 years they should give their women the right to vote. Oh, and of course when they start it all they should begin with some genocide and ethnic cleansing.

... life, by definition, is never still.

If somebody says "I love you" to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? "I love you, too."

Everything about life is a joke. Don't you know that?

Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.

My god-life! who can understand eve one little minute of it? 'don't try' he said 'just pretend you understand.

Make love when you can. It's good for you.

Life is no way to treat an animal.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC

Love is where you find it.

I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency."

We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one.

Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.

A man without a home can't be lost.

a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life