Kurt Vonnegut

Son—they say there isn't any royalty in this country, but do you want me to tell you how to be king of the United States of America? Just fall through the hole in a privy and come out smelling like a rose.

"The hell with the human race!" said Beatrice.

"You're a member of it, you know," said Rumfoord.

"Then I'd like to put in for a transfer to the chimpanzees!" said Beatrice. "No chimpanzee husband would stand by while his wife lost all her coconuts."

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.

"O Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia—what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool like Malachi Constant point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, 'Somebody up there likes me.' And no longer can a tyrant say, 'God wants this or that to happen, and anybody who doesn't help this or that to happen is against God.' O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!"

He held up his watch to sunlight, letting it drink in the wherewithal that was to solar watches what money was to Earth men.

Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie withing every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.

Here lies Howard Campbell's essence,

Freed from his body's noisome nuisance.

His body, empty, prowls the earth,

Earning what a body's worth.

If his body and his essence remain apart,

Burn his body, but spare this, his heart.

"I would say, 'Is there anything I can do?'—but Skip once told me that that was the most hateful and stupid expression in the English language."

The lieutenant-colonel realized for the first time what most people never realize about themselves—that he was not only a victim of outrageous fortune, but one of outrageous fortune's cruelest agents as well.

There was not a country in the world that had not fought a battle in the war of all Earth against the invaders from Mars.

All was forgiven.

All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.

I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to man than a fire engine.