Best Kurt Vonnegut Quotes from Selected Works with Chapter Numbers

 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922—April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death. 

Below, find the best quotes from Slaughterhouse-Five and corresponding chapter numbers! I utilize my own editions (which match the cover images used below), but regardless, the quotes will appear in order of whichever text you use. 

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

• All this happened, more or less.
• Chapter 1

• I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.
• Chapter 1

• The nicest veterans . . . the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought. 
• Chapter 1

• And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
• Chapter 1

• And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did looks back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.
• Chapter 1

• People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.
• Chapter 1

• All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. 
• Chapter 2

• It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
• Chapter 2

• When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'
• Chapter 2

• Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
• Chapter 2

• It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steer containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. 
• Chapter 4

• Why me? That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? Yes. Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.
• Chapter 4

• There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.
• Chapter 5

• I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.
• Chapter 5

• How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
• Chapter 5

• That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.
• Chapter 5

• Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
• Chapter 5

• America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, "It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be." It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" There will also be an American flag no larger than a child's hand—glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
• Chapter 5

•   Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruits was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
• Chapter 8

• Still—if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
• Chapter 10