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There is a strong feeling in the Middle West that the artist is not pulling his own weight no matter how hard he may work, that the other people are doing the real stuff.

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.
Stuff
Feelings
Pulling
May
West
Matter
Weight
Hard
Middle
Real
Feeling
Work
Strong
People
Artist

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The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.
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A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.
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I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble.
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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.
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Unhappy failures need not apply.
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Out in the world I go! Muggers! Autograph hounds! Junkies! People with real jobs! Maybe an easy lay! United Nation functionaries and diplomats!
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It's the writer's job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.
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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.
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Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.
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You know what truth is? [...] It's some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, Yeah, yeah - ain't it the truth?
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I am beguiled by your physical beauty, and I am moved by how head-over-heels in love with books you are. And nowhere else have I found such thoughtful and literate reportage on the state of the American soul, as that soul makes itself known in the books we write.
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Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe.
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Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.
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If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.
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Alcohol and marijuana, if used in moderation, plus loud, usually low-class music, make stress and boredom infinitely more bearable.
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Hitler at the end thought that he himself was one more casualty in the war.
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If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.
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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.
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But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
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The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like mine, find rapture enough in secular knowledge and hope. Most people can't.
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