Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.was an American author. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth11 November 1922
CountryUnited States of America
anywhere clause crooked eager shortage though
There is never a shortage anywhere of lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment, as though it were nothing more than a clause in a lease from a crooked slumlord.
asimov behave fiction great honorary humanist isaac president rewards science society succeeded utterly writer
I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.
science
All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it's such an interesting part of their environment.
distressed funny ghastly people
When I'm being funny, I try not to offend. I don't think much of what I've done has been in really ghastly taste. I don't think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.
country death
This country is being managed to death, being public related to death.
homes love people
Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
main people replied
Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.
funny helps
I'm screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I'm funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that's appreciated by young people.
chemicals failed faulty particular temptation
It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.
describe figure human interested mostly people readers somewhere sure writers
One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.
asked civilian civilians deeds impressive including kinds refuse war ways
I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.
chemistry color convinced cornered days firmly god quite scientists
Back in my days as a chemistry student, I used to be quite a technocrat. I was firmly convinced that scientists would have cornered God and photographed Him in color by 1951.
best business terrible
I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.
children country courts divine duties exercise freedom grow guided insist lovely natural policemen prisons seldom taught troubles
What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.