all that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a great depression. we may even be hiding a third world war

Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.

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

If Jesus was alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.

I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about the secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Mr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him.

Kurt Vonnegut speaking to John Irving while Irving was administering the Heimlich maneuver in response to Vonnegut's uncontrollable coughing..."John,stop- I am not choking. I have emphysema.