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"...because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds."
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Exlpore more Tragedy quotes
"Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories - cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful."
"Alone with everybody the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul,and the women break vases against the walls and them men drink too much and nobody finds the one but they keep looking crawling in and out of beds.flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh.there's no chance at all:we are all trapped by a singular fate.nobody ever finds the one.the city dumps fill the junkyards fill the mad houses fill the hospitals fill the graveyards fill nothing else fills."
"Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."
"Malphas surveyed the women's bodies with utter disgust and sorrowuntil he realized Tabitha was still alive. He knelt by her side and cradled her head tenderly. "Tabby... I'm so sorry"Grimacing she opened her eyes as she labored to breathe. She laughed bitterly, exposing a set of bleeding teeth. "there are some things that sorry doesn't fix, Caleb.""Shhh, don't speak. I can--""you failed us," She went limp in his arms. Her eyes went Dull.Wincing, Caleb held her close to his heart and stroked her bloody hair. "No, Tabby. I failed myself.""Most of all, I failed Nick."
"The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life."
"She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her."
"What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it."
"Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand."
Explore more quotes by Kurt Vonnegut
"I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool."
"This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to judge it. This person does not care what it becomes. It is eager to become absolutely anything it is supposed to be."
"I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber."
"Pretty, was she?""Pretty?" he echoed. "Mister, when I see my first lady angel, if God ever sees fit to show me one, it'll be her wings and not her face that'll make my mouth fall open. I've already seen the prettiest face that ever could be."
"I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival."
"Dr. Breed keeps telling me the main thing with Dr. Hoenikker was truth."You don't seem to agree."I don't know whether I agree or not. I just have trouble understandinghow truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person."
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist."
"After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?"
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