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I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

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.
Think
Memorable
Thinking
Disappear
Creator
Literature
History
Speak
Tremendously
Mind
Asshole
Something
Refreshing

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. I suppose they will all want dignity, I said.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics.
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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Love may fail, but # courtesy will prevail.
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
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Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
Kurt Vonnegut
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She broke my heart. I didn't like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for.
Kurt Vonnegut
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One thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?
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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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kar.a.bek.i.an (n.) (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People are only animals, but special animals. Every animal has fought and killed to survive, even before the dinosaurs. We're the only ones that do it for fun. That's why I don't know about Darwinism. Supposedly evolution and natural selection are all about survival, but we haven't gotten smarter over the years, only more dangerous.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind.
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