# Quote — Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

> I always had trouble ending short stories in ways that would satisfy a general public. In real life, as during a rerun following a timequake, people don’t change, don’t learn anything from their mistakes, and don’t apologize. In a short story they have to do at least two out of three of those things, or you might as well throw it away in the lidless wire trash receptacle chained and padlocked to the fire hydrant in front of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

- Author: [Kurt Vonnegut](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut.md)
- Book: [Timequake](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake.md)
- Page: 161
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Timequake#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake/i-always-had

## More from this book

> All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake/all-persons-living.md)

> Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake/many-people-need.md)

> I asked Kilgore Trout for his ballpark opinion of John Wilkes Booth. He said Booth's performance in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on the night of Good Friday, April 14th, 1865, when he shot Lincoln and then jumped from a theater box to the stage, breaking his leg, was "the sort of thing which is bound to happen whenever an actor creates his own material."

p. 225 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake/i-asked-kilgore.md)