Kurt Vonnegut Zitate

seite 3

Armin Wertz: Meister der geheimen Kriege, 22. März 2017 heise.de https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Meister-der-geheimen-Kriege-3650452.html.
"And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year." - „I Love You, Madame Librarian“. 6. August 2004 inthesetimes.com http://inthesetimes.com/article/903/i_love_you_madame_librarian

Quelle: Jailbird (1979), p. 12 (prologue)
Kontext: Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days. In public schools and in the homes of nice people it was and remains pretty much taboo to tell tales of labor's sufferings and derring-do.

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Cold Turkey (2004)
Kontext: Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

Mother Night (1961)
Kontext: "You hate America, don't you?" she said.
"That would be as silly as loving it," I said. "It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will."

Recurring phrase throughout many chapters
Hocus Pocus (1990)

Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Kontext: I was on par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here.
What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this:
This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this:
What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe.
And so on.
Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.

Cold Turkey (2004)
Kontext: I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

Galápagos (1985)
Kontext: Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next — and on and on.

Timequake (1997)

Cold Turkey (2004)

Quelle: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 34 (p. 313)

Quelle: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 9 (p. 88)

Hocus Pocus (1990)

Quelle: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 78)

Originates in a 2007 blog post by Iain S. Thomas entitled The Fur http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/2007/08/fur.html
Misattributed

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Quelle: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 32 (p. 295)

The People One Knows
Palm Sunday (1981)

Quelle: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 3 “United Hotcake Preferred” (p. 72)

He asked if it had a name, and I said “Indianapolis.”
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

Epilogue “Reunion with Stony” (p. 313)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)

As quoted in "Vonnegut's Blues For America" Sunday Herald (7 January 2006)
Various interviews

A Man Without a Country (2005)

"Mildred"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

Hocus Pocus (1990)

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Cold Turkey (2004)

As quoted in Science Fictionisms (1995), compiled by William Rotsler
Various interviews