Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

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.

People like to feel entitled, whether they're actually entitled or not.

The computer revolution has allowed white-collar criminals to do what the Mob would have loved to do - put a pawnshop and a loan shark in every home!

After the First World War, Germany was trying to build a democracy. Then when the Reichstag, the legislature, was burned down in 1933, this was seen as such an emergency that human rights had to be suspended. The attack on the World Trade Towers has allowed Bush and his gang to do anything. What are we to do now? I say when there's a code red, we should all run around like chickens with our heads cut off. I don't feel that we are in any great danger.

We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can't stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy.

...when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.