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The arts are not a way to make a living.

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.
Bearable
Arts
Living
Art
Way
Make

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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The worst thing about film, from my point of view, is that it cripples illusions which I have encouraged people to create in their heads. Film doesn't create illusion. It makes them impossible. It is a bullying form of reality, like the model rooms in the furniture department of Bloomingdale's.
Kurt Vonnegut
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God damn it, you've got to be kind.
Kurt Vonnegut
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That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
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
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But anyway, it's obvious through human experience that extended families and tribes are terribly important. We can do without an extended family as human beings about as easily as we can do without vitamins or essential minerals.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
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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You know, the Emancipation Proclamation was like giving freedom to domestic animals.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If I wrote something that hadn't really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That's fraud!
Kurt Vonnegut
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And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.
Kurt Vonnegut
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There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth.
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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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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Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.
Kurt Vonnegut
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What's going to happen is, very soon, we're going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses. There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Roses are red, And ready for plucking, You're sixteen, And ready for high school.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Of course I love you, So let's have a kid. Who will say exactly What its parents did Of course I love you, So let's have a kid. Who will say exactly What its parents did 'Of course I love you, So let's have a kid Who will say exactly What its parents did -' Et cetera. -NOBLE CLAGGETT (1947-1966)
Kurt Vonnegut
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I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.
Kurt Vonnegut
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A man without a home can't be lost.
Kurt Vonnegut