Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea."

"...We took the 10 machines we agreed were the most beguiling, and we put them on permanent exhibit in the foyer of this library underneath a sign whose words can surely be applied to this whole ruined planet nowadays: THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE."

"You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do."

"The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow."

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward."

"I have no doubt that they'll tell you a lot of kind things about me when my back is turned. They may not have been behind the door when God passed out the pretty faces, but Heaven only knows where they were when He divided up the gratitude."

"When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed."

"He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so."

"The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art."

"When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, 'You think your dad's a good chemist? They're turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?"

"The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitles, enigmatically, Evelyn and Her Magic Violin."

"If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness."