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Literature is the only art in which the audience performs the score.

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.
Performs
Score
Audience
Literature
Art

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People are lying all the time as to what a murderous nation we are. So let it be known. We're behaving abominably. It's like having a relative go absolutely nuts. Somebody has to say, I think Uncle Charlie's off his rocker. We are behaving in a bizarre manner.
Kurt Vonnegut
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What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?
Kurt Vonnegut
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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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I go on many thrilling adventures and wondrous, profound escapades through books.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing.
Kurt Vonnegut
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She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren't nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they were meant to do.
Kurt Vonnegut
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How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
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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Start [writing] as close to the end as possible.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You are pooped and demoralised,” read Dwayne. “Why wouldn’t you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.
Kurt Vonnegut
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People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
Kurt Vonnegut
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This is a nation tragedy, of course - that we've changed from a society to an audience.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.
Kurt Vonnegut