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When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.

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.
Character
Right
Characters
Writing
Students
Something
Teach
Make
Creative
Would
Tell
Away
Used

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Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ.
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Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It's the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.
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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.
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... humanity deserved to die horribly, since it had behaved so cruelly and wastefully on a planet so sweet.
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What good is a planet called Earth, after all, if you own no land?
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If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
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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.
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If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?
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About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.
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The world is too serious. To get mad at a work of art-because maybe somebody, somewhere is blowing his stack over what I've done-is like getting mad at a hot fudge sundae.
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The highest treason in the USA is to say Americans are not loved, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing there.
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To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon.
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Artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.
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1. Find a subject you care about. 2. Do not ramble, though. 3. Keep it simple. 4. Have the guts to cut. 5. Sound like yourself. 6. Say what you mean to say. 7. Pity the readers.
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Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
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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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Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth or not.
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The worst thing about film, from my point of view, is that it cripples illusions which I have encouraged people to create in their heads. Film doesn't create illusion. It makes them impossible. It is a bullying form of reality, like the model rooms in the furniture department of Bloomingdale's.
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I'd rather have written Cheers than anything I've written.
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Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
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