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

More quotes by 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.
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And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.
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You know, the Emancipation Proclamation was like giving freedom to domestic animals.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You can only be funny if you have matters of great importance on your mind.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.
Kurt Vonnegut
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What war has always been is a puberty ceremony.
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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Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut
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. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It's only recently that I've come to understand that writers are not marginal to our society, that they, in fact, do all our thinking for us, that we are writing myths and our myths are believed, and that old myths are believed until someone writes a new one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There were creative-writin g teachers long before there were creative-writin g courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You had to get everything exactly right or the editors would give you hell.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I wish you'd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity.
Kurt Vonnegut
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This is what i find most encouraging about the writing trades: they allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.
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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And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
Kurt Vonnegut