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My country is in ruins. So I'm a fish in a poisoned fishbowl. I'm mostly just heartsick about this. There should have been hope. This should have been a great country. But we are despised all over the world now. I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.

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.
Hope
Fish
War
Mostly
Book
Fishes
Country
Add
Poisoned
Great
Wrote
Despised
World
Build
Served
Books
Hoping
Literature
Ruins

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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Every writer has to write his speech.
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I am better now. Word of honour: I am better now.
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Any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he is doing is a charlatan.
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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.
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The dog, who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances, was a female German Shepherd. She was shivering. Her tail was between her legs. She had been borrowed that morning from a farmer. She had never been to war before. She had no idea what game was being played. Her name was Princess.
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In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.
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Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing.
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Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
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There were creative-writin g teachers long before there were creative-writin g courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors.
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If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?
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Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
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If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
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Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too.
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We're not too young for love, just too young for about everything there is that goes with love.
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The other American divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks.
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Bill Gates says, 'Wait till you can see what your computer can become.' But it’s you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work-not the damn fool computer.
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When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.
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there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?
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Time is liquid. One moment is no more important than any other and all moments quickly run away.
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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