I've devoured every book that Kurt Vonnegut wrote since I was a kid. I make it a point to re-read Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions every few years. I have to say that he influenced the way I think more than any other author and more than most of my teachers. Truth be told, he probably influenced the way I think more than anyone.
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"Take care of the people, and God Almighty will take care of Himself."
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
"No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's..."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle."
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'"
"The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.
But the Gospels actually taught this:
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes."
"Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut," murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest.
"You are pooped and demoralized. Why wouldn't you be! Of course it's exhausting having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable."
"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."
"Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is - from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian. If I'd even been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me."
"The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't 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"
"About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm."
"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."
"If facts weren't funny, or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them."
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"If I should ever die, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
~from Vonnegut's Blues For America 07 January, 2006 Sunday Herald
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