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Artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.

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.
Realizing
Sensitive
Society
Useful
Canaries
Artist
Artists
Keel
Long
Mines
Robust
Like
Filled
Gas
Danger
Coal
Realize
Types
Type
Poison

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There is a strong feeling in the Middle West that the artist is not pulling his own weight no matter how hard he may work, that the other people are doing the real stuff.
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[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.
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So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.
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I learned how to make jokes because I wanted to give people as much fun as they did, and I guess I did, too.
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Some automatic device clicked in her big brain, and her knees felt weak, and there was a chilly feeling in her stomach. She was in love with this man. They don't make memories like that anymore
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The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.
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Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.
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If somebody says, I love you, to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? I love you, too.
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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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Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
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Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It's the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.
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You know, the Emancipation Proclamation was like giving freedom to domestic animals.
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Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.
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I was clasified as a 'Science Fiction' writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady.
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Music makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it.
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The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.
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Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.
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The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.
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That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes.
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I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: C-Students from Yale.
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