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The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

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.
Writing
Leave
Way
Ready
Brain
Alone
Write
Anything
Brains
Wells
Damn
Well
Writer

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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People who are wary of what they might find in a book if they opened one are right to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Is there nothing I have done which will outlive me, other than the opprobrium of my first wife and sons and grandchildren? Do I care? Doesn't everybody? Poor me. Poor practically everybody, with so little durable good to leave behind!
Kurt Vonnegut
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If people insist on living as if there's no tomorrow, there really won't be one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Trout was petrified there on Forty-second Street. It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We'd all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.
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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Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I hope that my ideas attract a lively dialogue, even if my sentences are simple. Simple sentences have always served me well. And I don't use semicolons. It's hard to read anyway, especially for high school kids. Also, I avoid irony, too. I don't like people saying one thing and meaning the other.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.
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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... life, by definition, is never still.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I had a friend who was a heavy drinker. If somebody asked him if he'd been drunk the night before, he would always answer offhandedly, 'Oh, I imagine.' I've always liked that answer. It acknowledges life as a dream.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking.
Kurt Vonnegut