01c. 1950 ADPractice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
02c. 1950 ADArtists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
03c. 1950 ADPracticing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
05c. 1950 ADRumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant's father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" at any price. The old man had punished Mona Lisa by having her used in an advertising campaign for suppositories. It was the free-enterprise way of handling beauty that threatened to get the upper hand.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
06c. 1950 ADThat's what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call "personality", or maybe even "pain".Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
07c. 1950 AD...a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
08c. 1950 ADwhat you respond to in any work of art is the artist's struggle against his or her limitationsKurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
09c. 1950 ADThe primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
10c. 1950 ADWe're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
11c. 1950 ADAside from battles, the history of nations seemed to consist of nothing but powerless old poops like myself, heavily medicated and vaguely beloved in the long ago, coming to kiss the boots of young psychopaths.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
12c. 1950 ADWe’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive. It’s pretty dense kids who haven’t figured that out by the time they’re 10. ... Most kids can’t afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
13c. 1950 ADGod grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.'Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
14c. 1950 ADAnd Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
16c. 1950 ADThat's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses. Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
17c. 1950 ADYou're the man who stands on the street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each square are the words, 'I love you.' And each passer-by, no matter who, gets a square all his or her own. I don't want my square of toilet pKurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
18c. 1950 ADIf I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
19c. 1950 ADShe turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
20c. 1950 ADA winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls trudged beside us, hearing what Miss Pefko said. She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
21c. 1950 ADIf people think nature is their friend then they sure don't need an enemy.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
23c. 1950 ADThere is no peace, I'm sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
24c. 1950 ADThe brainless serenity of charwomen and janitors working late at night came over us. In a messy world we were at least making our little corner clean.Kurt Vonnegut Jr. / quote ↗
