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The Fourteenth Book is entitled, What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years? It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: Nothing.

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.
Book
Word
Entitled
Nothing
Read
Thoughtful
Take
Hope
Consists
Long
Experience
Period
Years
Given
Million
Men
Doesn
Periods
Past
Mankind
Earth
Millions
Fourteenth

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Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.
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Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be yours.
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Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too.
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The most racist, nastiest act by America, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki. Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children. I'm glad I'm not a scientist because I'd feel so guilty now.
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I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.
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Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
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Live while you live, when you're dead you're dead.
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You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do.
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The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.
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I never asked to be born in the first place.
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The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
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For some people, getting pregnant is as easy as catching cold. And there certainly was an analogy there: Colds and babies were both caused by germs which loved nothing so much as a mucous membrane.
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... uncritical love is the only real treasure.
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Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
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Never have I risked my life, or even my comfort, in the service of mankind. Shame on me.
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Well here you are, there it is, THIS is what it's all about.
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I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency.
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I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.
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The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.
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As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day.
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