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What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.

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.
Eye
Rough
War
Missing
Away
Boys
Thereafter
Back
Went
Puberty
Always
Maybe
Immature
Men
Came
Ceremony
People
Call
Maturity
Whatever
Mature

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes.
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If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
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Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.
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I wish you'd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity.
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The only thing I ever learned was that some people are lucky and other people aren't and not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School can say why.
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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My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We could have saved the earth, but we were too damned cheap.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Kurt Vonnegut
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How embarrassing it is to be human.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You become who you pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.
Kurt Vonnegut
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In the middle of Siberia I guess there's a lake that big [ like the Great Lakes], but there are practically no other lakes that big with fresh water.
Kurt Vonnegut
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What has been America's most nurturing contribution to the culture of this planet so far? Many would say jazz. I, who love jazz, will say this instead: Alcoholics Anonymous.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Anybody with any sense knows the whole solar system will go up like a celluloid collar by-and-by.
Kurt Vonnegut
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On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight....I can remember other bug fights we staged later on...They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Hardly anyone in the world is an American
Kurt Vonnegut
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Start [writing] as close to the end as possible.
Kurt Vonnegut