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Quotes from Mother Night — Kurt Vonnegut

1922–2007 United States

← All quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

9 quotes

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Mother Night (1962)

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

Mother Night (1962)

Make love when you can. It's good for you.

Mother Night (1962)

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting … but no good reason ever to hate without reservation.

Mother Night (1961)

Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.

Mother Night (1962)

When you're dead you're dead.

Mother Night (1962)

If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes.

Mother Night (1962)

I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.

Mother Night (1962)

"I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought , so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me!"

Mother Night (1962)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Kurt Vonnegut (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.