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I don't know what anybody else in the world would want to thank America for, but man, it [jazz] works. What I like about it - and what public health people ought to like about it - it's safe sex.

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.
Like
Safe
World
Health
People
Ought
Public
Thank
Else
Jazz
America
Sex
Would
Anybody
Men
Works

More quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

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The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on? she asked me. The big show is inside my head, I said.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I've been living alone for so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.
Kurt Vonnegut
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That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
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.
Kurt Vonnegut
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It's only recently that I've come to understand that writers are not marginal to our society, that they, in fact, do all our thinking for us, that we are writing myths and our myths are believed, and that old myths are believed until someone writes a new one.
Kurt Vonnegut
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That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.
Kurt Vonnegut
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[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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One thing I hate about school committees today is that they cut arts programs out of the curriculum because they say the arts aren't a way to make a living.
Kurt Vonnegut
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If I was ever to have a child, this is what I'd tell it: 'Child,' I'd say, 'don't never mess with time. Keep now now and then then. And if you ever get lost in thick smoke, child, set still till it clears. Set still till you can see where you are and where you been and where you're going, child.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Trout was petrified there on Forty-second Street. It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Live while you live, when you're dead you're dead.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I can't tell if you're serious or not,' said the driver. I won't know myself until I find out if life is serious or not,' said Trout. 'It's dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn't necessarily mean it's serious, too.
Kurt Vonnegut
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We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.
Kurt Vonnegut
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I went to New York to be born again. And when the train plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with its lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.
Kurt Vonnegut
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...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.
Kurt Vonnegut
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The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.
Kurt Vonnegut