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One of the things I'm going to say out there is how grateful I am - and how grateful the world is - for the tremendous gift of the black people, of jazz.

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.
World
People
Tremendous
Jazz
Grateful
Gift
Black
Going
Things

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Hitler at the end thought that he himself was one more casualty in the war.
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Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.
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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.
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And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.
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I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian]
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The hopes and fears of all our years are here with us tonight.
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I didn't know then what a sperm was, and so wouldn't understand his answer for several years. My boy, he said, you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles-- champions every one.
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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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Son--they say there isn't any royalty in this country, but do you want me to tell you how to be king of the United States of America? Just fall through the hole in a privy and come out smelling like a rose.
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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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My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward.
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A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.
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Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch: everything stops.
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The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.
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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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... life, by definition, is never still.
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And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.
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Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.
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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.
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The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.
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