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People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.

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.
Littles
Pleasant
Little
Helps
Long
Laughter
Think
Circumstances
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Goes
People
Sort
Convulsion
Hate
Tickled
Helping
Desperate

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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Live while you live, when you're dead you're dead.
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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Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact how hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.
Kurt Vonnegut
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A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The slaves were simply turned loose without any property. They were easily recognizable. They were black. They were suddenly free to go exploring.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It seems to me that the most universal revolutionary wish now or ever is a wish for heaven, a wish by a human being to be honored by angels for something other than beauty or usefulness.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.
Kurt Vonnegut
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All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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?
Kurt Vonnegut
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This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.
Kurt Vonnegut
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A committee of three can accomplish much if two don't show up.
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
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The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.
Kurt Vonnegut
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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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Make love when you can. It's good for you.
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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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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Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.
Kurt Vonnegut