# Quote — Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

> The self-respects of most middle-class American people my age or older, and still alive, are out to pasture now, not a bad place to be. They munch. They ruminate. If self-respect breaks a leg, the leg can never heal. Its owner has to shoot it.

- Author: [Kurt Vonnegut](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut.md)
- Book: [Timequake](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kurt-vonnegut/timequake.md)
- Page: 211
- 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/the-self-respects-of-most

## 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)