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Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.

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.
Extremely
Endure
Writer
Talent
Common
Writing
Work
Willingness
Life
Rare

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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How important my books are or anybody's books are, I don't know. I don't think they are terribly important I think that they make people contented during the period they are reading them and this is worth something is to take care of somebody for a couple of hours.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Literature is the only art in which the audience performs the score.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I hope that my ideas attract a lively dialogue, even if my sentences are simple. Simple sentences have always served me well. And I don't use semicolons. It's hard to read anyway, especially for high school kids. Also, I avoid irony, too. I don't like people saying one thing and meaning the other.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People are lying all the time as to what a murderous nation we are. So let it be known. We're behaving abominably. It's like having a relative go absolutely nuts. Somebody has to say, I think Uncle Charlie's off his rocker. We are behaving in a bizarre manner.
Kurt Vonnegut
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How embarrassing it is to be human.
Kurt Vonnegut
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That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.
Kurt Vonnegut
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No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
Kurt Vonnegut
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profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC
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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Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of pain now, Unk, but you won't learn anything if you don't invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.
Kurt Vonnegut
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She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.
Kurt Vonnegut