“So it goes."Unlike many of these quotes, the repeated refrain from Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five isn't notable for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion—and dismissal of emotion—it packs into three simple, world-weary words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything. There's a reason this quote graced practically every elegy written for Vonnegut over the past two weeks (yes, including ours): It neatly encompasses a whole way of life. More crudely put: "Shit happens, and it's awful, but it's also okay. We deal with it because we have to.”

“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.”

“That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses. 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.”

“(speaking of insecurity)"It's broken greater spirits than ours, and robbed the world of God knows how much beauty. I've seen it happen more times than I like to think about."--"$10,000 A Year, Easy”

“The books he and his supporters wanted out of the schools, one of mine among them, were not pornographic, although he would have liked our audience to think so. (There is the word "motherfucker" one time in my Slaughterhouse-Five, as in "Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker." Ever since that word was published, way back in 1969, children have been attempting to have intercourse with their mothers. When it will stop no one knows.)”

“To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon. -Mr. Vonnegut”

“Would - would you mind telling me -" he said to the guide, much deflated, "what was so stupid about that?""We know how the Universe ends-" said the guide, "and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets wiped out, too." "How - how does the Universe end?" said Billy. "We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Trafalmodarian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears." So it goes.”