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I think jokes are a perfectly viable form of literature. Some critics take issue with me because I make my points and discuss my ideas with jokes, rather than with oceanic tragedy.

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
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Critics
Take
Issue
Make
Tragedy
Think
Jokes
Oceanic
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Literature
Discuss
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Perfectly

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight....I can remember other bug fights we staged later on...They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar.
Kurt Vonnegut
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One thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.
Kurt Vonnegut
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You can't just eat good food. You've got to talk about it too. And you've got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Anyone unable to understand how useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
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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As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day.
Kurt Vonnegut
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After that demonstration everybody was thinking, what's going to happen to these wonderful men who have been so useful to us? We have to give people something to do with life.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I love you, because the love you gave me was the only love I've ever had, the only love I ever will have
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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The moral of the story is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It's perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It's perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The Contessa was surely way ahead of her time, too, in believing that men were not only usless and idiotic, but downright dangerous. That idea wouldn't catch on big in her native country until the last three years of the Vietnam War.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of pain now, Unk, but you won't learn anything if you don't invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.
Kurt Vonnegut
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About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
Kurt Vonnegut
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My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur.
Kurt Vonnegut
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How important my books are or anybody's books are, I don't know. I don't think they are terribly important I think that they make people contented during the period they are reading them and this is worth something is to take care of somebody for a couple of hours.
Kurt Vonnegut