Quote

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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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.
Everything
Quickly
Done
Exactly
Bashers
Right
Getting
Painstakingly
Writing
Story
Fixing
Work
Write
Plain
Way
Next
Sentence
Time
Doesn
Sentences
Stories
Awful

More quotes by 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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The polls demonstrate that 50 percent of Americans who get their news from TV think Saddam Hussein was behind the Twin Towers attack. Man, have they got ways for getting half-truths out right away now, thanks to TV! I think TV is a calamity in a democracy.
Kurt Vonnegut
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One of the things I'm going to say out there is how grateful I am - and how grateful the world is - for the tremendous gift of the black people, of jazz.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere else have I found such thoughtful and literate reportage on the state of the American soul, as that soul makes itself known in the books we write.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.
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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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.
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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The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Nietzsche had a little one-liner on how to choose a wife. He said, ''Are you willing to have a conversation with this woman for the next forty years?'' That's how to pick a wife.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ.
Kurt Vonnegut
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But he is tired. He puts the pistol to his head again. He says, “I never asked to be born in the first place.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world — in the form of bad ideas.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I urge you to please notice when you are happy.
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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What war has always been is a puberty ceremony.
Kurt Vonnegut