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I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.

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.
Many
Weren
Would
Forth
Think
Jokes
Thinking
Response
Like
Constant
Crime
Trouble
Troubles
Fear
Frustration

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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In this world, you get what you pay for.
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America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.
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Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.
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1. Find a subject you care about. 2. Do not ramble, though. 3. Keep it simple. 4. Have the guts to cut. 5. Sound like yourself. 6. Say what you mean to say. 7. Pity the readers.
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I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We are all experiments in enthusiasms, narrow and preordained.
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Never index your own book.
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Shortridge High School was an elitist high school. In a way it was a scandal because you could go there no matter where you lived, if you could get there. It was for over-achievers. It was for people who were going to college. So we were very special and we were hated for being ritzy.
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Of course, socialism is just evil now. It's completely discredited supposedly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can't help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to Communist China now which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are.
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Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.
Kurt Vonnegut
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What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.
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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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before, Bokonon tells us. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren’t loved wherever they go, whatever they do.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Children get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks.
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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They like life alright, but that they would like it even better if they could know that it was going to end sometime.
Kurt Vonnegut
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To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
Kurt Vonnegut
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What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.
Kurt Vonnegut