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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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Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.
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One of [ways being lucky] was to go to school during the Great Depression because teaching became a plum job.
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Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
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It's perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It's perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.
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I am better now. Word of honour: I am better now.
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I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian]
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I just don't think people get off on language anymore. Language used to be an elevated art. It used to be for people what music can be. But people don't learn to do that anymore, so eloquence is merely a matter of waste. Who needs a good vocabulary and proper English? Eloquence - it's dead and who needs it?
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But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
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Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.
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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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All these years, I've been opening the window and making love to the world.
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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.
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Hardly anyone in the world is an American
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Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.
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The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.
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The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.
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If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke.
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I wish you'd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity.
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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.
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