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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.
Wasn
Compose
Feeling
Navy
Feelings
Fifth
Done
Anyway
Going
Soldier
Much
Army
Really
Usually
Life
Example
Beethoven

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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My ancient history teacher, Millie Lloyd, should have worn a medal for her performance at the battle of Thermopylae. She was excited and we were excited.
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Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
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Laughter or crying is what a human being does when there's nothing else he can do.
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The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.
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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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I've been living alone for so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.
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It's the writer's job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.
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But he is tired. He puts the pistol to his head again. He says, “I never asked to be born in the first place.
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Being an American means never having to say you're sorry.
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It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called 'mopping up.
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If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?
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I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.
Kurt Vonnegut
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To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Jack Benny, Fred Allen. Their jokes were wonderful. It takes skill to be funny. The timing of Jack Benny was so fine. It is a form of genius for which we should be grateful.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Some jerk infected the Internet with an outright lie. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are.
Kurt Vonnegut
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That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The death of a library, any library, suggests that the community has lost its soul.
Kurt Vonnegut