Kurt Vonnegut

Newt did not tell me who his girl friend was. But about two weeks after he wrote to me everybody in the country knew that her name was Zinka — plain Zinka. Apparently she didn’t have a last name.

Zinka was a Ukrainian midget, a dancer with the Borzoi Dance Company. As it happened, Newt saw a performance by that company in Indianapolis, before he went to Cornell. And then the company danced at Cornell. When the Cornell performance was over, little Newt was outside the stage door with a dozen long-stemmed American Beauty roses.

“It was hell for me—or not Hell, something worse than Hell.”

“What could be worse than Hell?” he said.

“Purgatory,” I said.

She had been given her opportunity to participate in civilization, and she had muffed it.

All people are insane,” he said. “They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.

What were you doing in Hitler’s bunker—looking for your motorcycle and your best friend?

It’s all I’ve seen, all I’ve been through,” I said, “that makes it damn nearly impossible for me to say anything. I’ve lost the knack of making sense. I speak gibberish to the civilized world, and it replies in kind.

Resi put the noose in the ash can, where it was found the next morning by a garbage-man named Lazlo Szombathy. Szombathy actually hanged himself with it—but that is another story.

I doubt if there has ever been a society that has been without strong and young people eager to experiment with homicide, provided no very awful penalties are attached to it.

I admire form,” I said. “I admire things with a beginning, a middle, an end—and, whenever possible, a moral, too.

You’d be good at public relations,” said Kraft.

“I certainly don’t have any powerful convictions to get in the way of a client’s message,” I said.