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A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

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.
Ten
Marks
Vesuvius
Eight
Arrangements
Numerals
Mark
Symbols
Waterloo
Battle
Cast
Eruption
Eyes
Casts
Envision
Eye
Twenty
Punctuation
Book
Twenties
Arrangement
People
Six
Mount
Phonetic

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We're here on Earth to fart around
Kurt Vonnegut
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The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Son--they say there isn't any royalty in this country, but do you want me to tell you how to be king of the United States of America? Just fall through the hole in a privy and come out smelling like a rose.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If I was ever to have a child, this is what I'd tell it: 'Child,' I'd say, 'don't never mess with time. Keep now now and then then. And if you ever get lost in thick smoke, child, set still till it clears. Set still till you can see where you are and where you been and where you're going, child.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
Kurt Vonnegut
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How embarrassing it is to be human.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It seems to me divorce is so common now. It ought to be more institutionalized. It's like a head-on collision every time. It's supposed to be a surprise but it's commonplace.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People who are wary of what they might find in a book if they opened one are right to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is a strong feeling in the Middle West that the artist is not pulling his own weight no matter how hard he may work, that the other people are doing the real stuff.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The complicated futility of ignorance.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The city was blacked out because bombers might come, so Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city can do when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one.
Kurt Vonnegut