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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.

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.
Jobs
Desks
Tell
Showers
Truth
Impressed
Ideas
Unexpected
Contrasted
Insight
Clutter
Familiar
Insights
Simply
Shower
Imagine
Desk

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.
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I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
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I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise
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She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].
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It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life.
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Every writer has to write his speech.
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Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.
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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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I'm eighty-three and I've been smoking since I was eleven. I'm suing the cigarette company because it promised to kill me and it hasn't.
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I've been living alone for so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.
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You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.
Kurt Vonnegut
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As Marilee and I were dressing, I whispered to her that I loved her with all my heart. What else was there to say? 'You don't. You can't,' she said.
Kurt Vonnegut
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To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The other American divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Kurt Vonnegut
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And what is literature, Rabo, he said, but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Kurt Vonnegut
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They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by. They were, I think, a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a duprass, which is a karass composed of only two persons.
Kurt Vonnegut