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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 8h

"’I should want to go to jail?’ said Paul, trying to get some sort of message for himself out of the anecdote.

‘You shouldn't let fear of jail keep you from doing what you believe in.’”

Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 20d

". . . “Anyway, Thoreau was in jail because he wouldn't pay a tax to support the Mexican War. He didn't believe in the war. And Emerson came to jail to see him. 'Henry,' he said, 'why are you here?' And Thoreau said, 'Ralph, why *aren't* you here?’”. . .”

Player Piano (1952)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 18h

“A Martian ship broadcast to Earth that another attack was on its way, an attack more terrible than anything ever known in war.
Earth laughed and got ready. All around the globe there was the cheerful popping away of amateurs familiarizing themselves with small arms.”

The Sirens of Titan (1959) 4/4

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 18h

“When American troops arrived at Boca Raton to fight the Martians, there was nothing left to fight. The civilians, flushed and proud, had taken care of everything nicely.

‘Send us more Martians,’ said Ross L. McSwann, the Mayor of Boca Raton.
He later became a United States Senator.” 3/

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 18h

“At the Battle of Boca Raton, in Florida, U.S.A., for instance, Mrs. Lyman R. Peterson shot four members of the Martian Assault Infantry with her son's .22 caliber rifle. She picked them off as they came out of their space ship, which had landed in her back yard.“ 2/

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 18h

“The only Martian military success was the capture of a meat market in Basel, Switzerland, by seventeen Parachute Ski Marines.

Everywhere else the Martians were butchered promptly, before they could even dig in.

As much butchering was done by amateurs as by professionals.” 1/

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 18h

"’Holy smokes, buddy,’ he said, ‘what we doing way out here? What we doing in these clothes? Who's steering this fool thing? How come we climbed into this tin can? How come we got to shoot somebody when we get to where we're going? How come he got to try and shoot us? How come?’”

Sirens (1959) 2/2

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 18h

“He was laughing at the ferocious mess he was in—at the way he had pretended all his army life that he had understood everything that was going on, and that everything that was going on was just fine.
He was laughing at the dumb way he had let himself be used—by God knows who for God knows what.” 1/

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“[T]heir colleagues love them the way old-fashioned big families were supposed to. Science-fiction writers meet often, comfort and praise one another, exchange single-spaced letters of twenty pages and more, booze it up affectionately, and one way or another have a million heart-throbs and laughs.”

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“But there are those who adore being classified as science-fiction writers anyway, who are alarmed by the possibility that they might someday be known simply as ordinary short-story writers and novelists who mention, among other things, the fruits of engineering and research.“

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“English majors are encouraged to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad...and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.”

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled ‘science fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
The way a person gets into this drawer, apparently, is to notice technology.”

Science Fiction (1974)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“And I do not see how I can get out of asking this question:
Does it matter to anyone or anything that all those peepholes were closed so suddenly? Since all the property is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved?”

Deadeye Dick (1982)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“So nobody lives in Midland City, Ohio, anymore. About one hundred thousand people died. That was roughly the population of Athens during the Golden Age of Pericles. That is two-thirds of the population of Katmandu.” (4/5)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“. . .I am told that every one of the television sets in the new Holiday Inn is still fully operable. So are all the telephones. So is the ice-cube maker behind the bar. All those sensitive devices were only a few hundred yards from the source of the flash.” (3/5)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“Everybody in the county was killed, including five people awaiting execution on death row in the Adult Correctional Institution at Shepherdstown. I certainly lost a lot of acquaintances all at once.

But most of the structures are still left standing and furnished. . .” (2/5)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 1d

“Midland City has now been depopulated by a neutron bomb explosion. It might have been a bigger story, a signal for the start of World War Three, if the Government hadn't acknowledged at once that the bomb was made in America. One newscast I heard called it *a friendly bomb.*. . .” (1/5)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 2d

"’That's worse. You're a Fascist, Wilbur. That's what you are.’

‘That's absurd,’ I said.

‘Fascists are inferior people who believe it when somebody tells them they're superior,’ she said.

‘Now, now—‘ I said.

‘Then they want everybody else to die,’ she said.”

Slapstick (1976)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 2d

“I thought Slazinger had said some things which were worth considering, but that, on the whole, he had made the country sound a lot worse than it really was, and that ours was still far and away the best one on the planet.

What do I myself make of that reply nowadays? It was an inane reply.” (4/4)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 2d

“. . .’Being an American means never having
to say you're sorry.’" (3/4)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 2d

“. . .He talked about bridges falling down and water mains breaking because of no maintenance. He talked about oil spills and radioactive waste and poisoned aquifers and looted banks and liquidated corporations. ‘And nobody ever gets punished for anything,’ he said. . .” (2/4)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 2d

“He predicted, I remember, that human slavery would come back, that it had in fact never gone away. He said that so many people wanted to come here because it was so easy to rob the poor people, who got absolutely no protection from the Government. . .” (1/4)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 7d

“[S]imply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work . . .”

Bluebeard (1987)

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 8d

“The Elders made us think that the Creator on the big throne hated strangers as much as we did, and that we would be doing Him a big favor if we tried to exterminate them by any and all means possible.

That went over big down here.”

Hocus Pocus (1990) 2/2

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 8d

“Another thing the Elders liked about Earthlings was that they feared and hated other Earthlings who did not look and talk exactly as they did. They made life a hell for each other as wellas for what they called ‘lower animals.’ They actually thought of strangers as lower animals.“ 1/2

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Kurt Vonnegut @kurt-vonnegut.bsky.social · 9d

. . . “Trout might have said, and it can be said of me as well, that he created *caricatures* rather than characters. His animus against so-called *mainstream literature*, moreover, wasn't peculiar to him. It was generic among writers of science fiction.”

Timequake (1997) 2/2

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