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The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.

Kurt Vonnegut

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Kurt Vonnegut
Age: 84 †
Born: 1922
Born: November 11
Died: 2007
Died: April 14
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Kurt Vonnegut
Jr.
Much
Army
Really
Usually
Life
Example
Beethoven
Wasn
Compose
Feeling
Navy
Feelings
Fifth
Done
Anyway
Going
Soldier

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That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes.
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What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.
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I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.
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Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?
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Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day.
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There's a Chaplain who never visited the front.
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Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.
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Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.
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Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
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A lot of people were opposed to it. A lot of people were for it. I myself think about it as little as possible.
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America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.
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If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.
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Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
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Human beings will believe in all kinds of things that aren't true, and that's okay. And TV is a part of that.
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I didn't know then what a sperm was, and so wouldn't understand his answer for several years. My boy, he said, you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles-- champions every one.
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The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before.
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Start [writing] as close to the end as possible.
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His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand—passive resistance and open displays of contempt.
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You know what truth is? [...] It's some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, Yeah, yeah - ain't it the truth?
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If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.
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