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Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears.

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.
Writers
Bears
Witted
Particular
Drag
Talk
Guts
Society
Novelists
Around
Quick
Like
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Shots

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The system promotes to the top those who don't care about the planet.
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I've been living alone for so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.
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I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.
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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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Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch: everything stops.
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Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.
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I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.
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A committee of three can accomplish much if two don't show up.
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I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares how we are or what we do.
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The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. I suppose they will all want dignity, I said.
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The paintings by dead men who were poor most of their lives are the most valuable pieces in my collection. And if an artist wants to really jack up the prices of his creations, may I suggest this: suicide.
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The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm.
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After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?
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See the cat? See the cradle?
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Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing.
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All these years, I've been opening the window and making love to the world.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Terry Southern is the illegitimate son of Mack Sennett and Edna Saint Vincent Millay.
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.
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I've written about Powers Hapgood. He was a Harvard graduate, son of a wealthy family who owned a cannery out there. After leaving Harvard, he went to work in coal mines and then was a CIO executive when I met him there, in Indianapolis.
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You should be careful about who you pretend to be, because who you pretend to be - is actually who you are!
Kurt Vonnegut