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...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.

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.
Hard
Laugh
Believe
Beings
World
Laughing
Hate
Snarl
Thought
Ludicrous
Human
Eager
Humans
Reluctant
Many
Incapable

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.
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We are all experiments in enthusiasms, narrow and preordained.
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Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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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Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what.
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Our classes were relatively small. Those small classes can feel like family. After a class in French or chemistry or whatever, we'd be talking in the halls about what we just learned.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Oh, a lion hunter in the jungle dark, And a sleeping drunkard up in central park, and a Chinese dentist and a British queen All fit together in the same machine. Nice, nice, such very different people in the same device!
Kurt Vonnegut
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You had to get everything exactly right or the editors would give you hell.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I didn't know then what a sperm was, and so wouldn't understand his answer for several years. My boy, he said, you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles-- champions every one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The only proof he needed for the existance of God was music.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You've got to be a good date for the reader.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Ink and paper are as cheap as sand or water, almost. No board of directors has to convene in order to decide whether we can afford to write down this or that. I myself once staged the end of the world on two pieces of paper- at a cost of ...less than a penny, including wear and tear on my typewriter ribbon and the seat of my pants. 'Think of that.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet.
Kurt Vonnegut