“Vonnegut is one of America's basic artists, a true and worthy heir to the grand tradition of Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Traven, Tom Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe, I mean) and Steinbeck. In other words, he writes out of a concern for justice, love, honesty, and hope.”

“Tom: If you love with kindness, even when you can't love with permanence, you'll deserve the one who's worthy along that path for you.”

“But once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. Once you know this is true, that the heart of man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict (the struggle of creation) and that with the conflict removed, the man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all the little vanities and laxities that Success is heir to--why, then with this knowledge you are at least in a position of knowing where the danger lies.”

“Tom Cruise isn't that big of a guy," my mom always says. I love how she tries to avoid using the word "short."Yeah," I tell her in return, "but he compensates by being Tom Cruise."Not that anyone really wants to BE Tom Cruise anymore now that he's a crazy couch jumper. But whatever.”

“What's that supposed to mean? A wolf's head on a stick. Big wolf barbecue tonight? Bring your own wolf?”

“You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom's Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.”