Home > Work > Welcome to the Monkey House
1 " Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics "
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , Welcome to the Monkey House
2 " Our aim is to make the world more beautiful than it was when we came into it. It can be done. You can do it--love yourself "
3 " Don't forget to wind the restricted clock and put the confidential cat out. "
4 " Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns. "
5 " Somebody will beat both [contents and price] sooner or later because that is good old Free Enterprise, where the consumer benefits from battles between jolly green giants. "
6 " He had had no experience in asking for a job with a big organization, and Mr. Dilling was making him aware of what a fine art it was--if you couldn't run a machine. A duel was under way. "
7 " I am committing suicide by cigarette,” I replied. She thought that was reasonably funny. I didn’t. I thought it was hideous that I should scorn life that much, sucking away on cancer sticks. "
8 " A woman's not a woman till the pills wear off. "
9 " I wish you'd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity. "
10 " Fred Bockman is thirty and looks eighteen. Life has left no marks on him, because he hasn’t paid much attention to it. "
11 " A sane person to an insane society must appear insane. "
12 " The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide. "
13 " I'm odd, I know,' he said. 'It's fear of myself that's made me odd. "
14 " I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing. In the water I am beautiful. "
15 " What in hell is a girl with hips like yours doing selling death? "
16 " And I realize now that the two main themes of my novels were stated by my siblings: 'Here I am, cleaning shit off of practically everything' and 'No pain. "
17 " I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding present from your friend, EPICAC. "
18 " There are too many of us, and we are all too far apart, "
19 " He had the air of a spy in a melodrama, missing nothing, liking nothing, looking forward to the great day when everything would be turned upside down. "
20 " The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. "
