Курт Воннегут цитаты

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„Будь мягким. Не позволяй миру сделать тебя жестоким. Не позволяй боли заставить тебя ненавидеть и не допусти, чтобы горечь украла твою сладость.“

„Я собираюсь судиться с производителем Pall Mall: мне 83, я курю Pall Mall с двенадцати лет, и эти лживые негодяи давно обещают меня убить, о чем сообщают прямо на упаковке. Но я жив.“

„Если Вы всерьёз хотите разочаровать родителей, а к гомосексуализму душа не лежит, — идите в искусство.“

„Если бы в твоей голове заменить мозги на динамит в пропорции 1:1, то тебе бы даже шляпу не сорвало таким взрывом.“

„Тело — это самый прекрасный инструмент, которым Вы будете обладать. Танцуйте. Даже если Вам негде этого делать кроме Вашей гостиной.“

„И, пожалуйста, не читайте журналы о красивой жизни. Они только заставят вас чувствовать себя отвратительно.“

„Однажды я спросил своего сына Марка, в чем смысл жизни, и он сказал: «Мы родились для того, чтобы помочь друг другу прорваться в жизни». Он прав.“

„Люди умнеют, как слоны, которые в минуту опасности говорят: «Эге, мы в опасности, но всё будет путём, только надо весу поднабрать, фунтов 200-300», — или как жирафы: «Жизнь — дерьмо, но всё наладится, если только у нас шеи ещё чуток вырастут.»“

„… мы появляемся на свет для того, чтобы помочь друг другу пережить эту самую жизнь, в чем бы там ни был её смысл.“

„Искусство — не способ зарабатывать на жизнь. Но это очень человечный способ делать жизнь более переносимой. Когда вы занимаетесь искусством — не важно, хорошо получается или плохо, — душа ваша растет.“

„В чёрный суглинок, в болото, в песок, в камень, в асфальт или в ковёр каждый человек глубоко пускает корни для того, чтобы назвать это место своим домом.“

„Я пишу как ребёнок. Я не злоупотребляю длинными предложениями. Я не пользуюсь точкой с запятой. Я избегаю иронии — мне не нравится, когда люди говорят одно, а имеют в виду другое. Поэтому меня читают школьники.“

„Люди нуждаются в хорошей лжи, потому что кругом слишком много плохой.“

„Мы пришли в этот мир, чтобы наслаждаться нихренанеделанием. Не слушайте никого, кто будет уверять, что наше предназначение в другом.“

„Мы не остановим войны и не вылечим рак до тех пор, пока не прилетят парни на летающих тарелках и не расскажут, как это сделать.“

„Зрелость — это способность осознавать предел своих возможностей.“

„В мире нет нехватки в прекрасных писателях, но есть недостаток в надежных читателях. Поэтому я предлагаю, чтобы всем безработным выдавали очередной чек на получение пособия в обмен на список прочитанных книг.“

„Какими бы коррумпированными, алчными и бессердечными ни становились наше правительство, наш большой бизнес, наши СМИ, наши религиозные и благотворительные организации, музыка никогда не утратит очарования.“

„Война во Вьетнаме сделала миллионеров миллиардерами, а война в Ираке сделает миллиардеров триллионерами. Это то, что я называю прогрессом.“

„Мы рождены, чтобы помогать друг другу преодолевать всё, что будет нам ниспослано.“

„Большинство писем от родителей наполнены неосуществленными родительскими мечтами, замаскированными под добрые советы.“

„Мне кажется, что процессом эволюции управляет какой-то инженер от Бога. Поэтому на свете есть жирафы, бегемоты и гонорея.“

„Я потерял много друзей-писателей. Все они давали мне свои работы со словами «Прочти и скажи, что думаешь». Ну я и говорил.“

„Будущее, возможно, так же влияет на нас нынешних, как и прошлое. Жизнь — штука замысловатая. И мне действительно кажется, что будущее куда сильнее воздействует на настоящее, чем мы себе представляем. И ничего с этим поделать нельзя.“

“You know, the truth can be really powerful stuff. You're not expecting it.”

“This is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.”

“Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.”

“Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Constant, “the Universe is a junk yard, with everything in it overpriced. I am through poking around in the junk heaps, looking for bargains. Every so-called bargain,” said Constant, “has been connected by fine wires to a dynamite bouquet.”

“Everybody's shaking in his boots, so don't be bluffed.”

“What is it, what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?”

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”

“People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.”

“Why throw money at problems? That's what money is for.
Should the nation's wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.”

“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 ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me.”

“Well, I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now."”

“Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America … We argued that is was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves — and yet it prescribed no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that their framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves of composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives — which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.
Eliza and I … proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble, or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.”

“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.”

“Drawn crudely in the dust of three window-panes were a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes. I had drawn the three symbols weeks before, at the conclusion of an argument about patriotism with Kraft. I had given a hearty cheer for each symbol, demonstrating to Kraft the meaning of patriotism to, respectively, a Nazi, a Communist, and an American. "Hooray, hooray, hooray," I'd said.”

“It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.”

“The new heroism — put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon.”

“All the things you are are going to be sued and sued successfully. And, while the litigants may not be able to get blood from turnips, they can certainly ruin the turnips in the process of trying.”

“You go up to a man, and you say, ‘How are things going, Joe?’ And he says, ‘Oh fine, fine—couldn’t be better.’ And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.”

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

“What do I myself think of this particular book? I feel lousy about it, but I always feel lousy about my books.”

“[Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife] is for me a secretly deep history of a generation of middle-class American males, my own, which was taught by parents and athletic coaches and scoutmasters and military chaplains and quack doctors and so on to be deeply ashamed of masturbation and wet dreams.
And the hidden plea in the book is one which first appeared in my eyes when I was fourteen, say, and which has not vanished entirely to this day. It is part of the mystery of me. The plea is addressed by old-fashioned males forever full of jism to any pretty human female, on the street, in a magazine, in a movie — anywhere. The plea is this: "Please, pretty lady, don't make me play with my private parts again."”

“What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?”

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”

“Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people’s blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.
“Every failure of Earthling leadership has been traceable to a lack on the part of the leader,” says Rumfoord, “of at least one of these three things.”

“I know that millions of dollars have been spent to produce this splendid graduating class, and that the main hope of your teachers was, once they got through with you, that you would no longer be superstitious. I'm sorry — I have to undo that now. I beg you to believe in the most ridiculous superstition of all: that humanity is at the center of the universe, the fulfiller or the frustrator of the grandest dreams of God Almighty.
If you can believe that, and make others believe it, then there might be hope for us. Human beings might stop treating each other like garbage, might begin to treasure and protect each other instead. Then it might be all right to have babies again.”

“Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.”