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8f5d864
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Oh, God -- the lives people try to lead. Oh, God -- what a world they try to lead them in.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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45889ab
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Never have I risked my life, or even my comfort, in the service of mankind. Shame on me.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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c296f67
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I love you, Eliza," I said. She thought about it. "No," she said at last, "I don't like it." "Why not?" I said. "It's as though you were pointing a gun at my head," she said. "It's just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don't mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, 'I love you, too'?"
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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fae09ef
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He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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bec8e9e
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I could carve a better man out of a banana.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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5d943c3
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So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasn't like my parents. I didn't have any supposedly sacred piece of land or shoals of friends to leave behind. Nowhere has the number zero been of more philisophical value than in the United States.... and when the [train] plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with it's lining of pipes and wires, I was out of ..
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rebirth
new-york-city
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ec5e553
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Tis better to have love and lust Than to let our apparatus rust.
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love
lechery
lust
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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35e08c4
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After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?
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war
man-made-disaster
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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2974119
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I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be linked unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even by a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell. The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. 'You're comple..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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7d0d4bb
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Take care of the people, and god almighty will take care of himself.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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7b07edd
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Our government's got a war on drugs. That's certainly better then no drugs at all.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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a061c98
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There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.
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politics
religion
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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57260e1
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We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
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present
thoughts
past
life
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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375dfc2
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Some automatic device clicked in her big brain, and her knees felt weak, and there was a chilly feeling in her stomach. She was in love with this man. They don't make memories like that anymore
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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014d9c9
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I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite
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education
writers-on-writing
hurt
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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2fa489b
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I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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795cbd4
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The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky--as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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617e122
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The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.
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suicide
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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b4a97ad
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Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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e015010
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Society is more concerned with material possessions than it is with the true love and compassion of another human being.
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mother-night
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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29e9cda
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In real life as in grand opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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f029991
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The book was Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout. It was about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three-dimensional Earthling doctors couldn't see those causes at all, or even imagine them.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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3a8192f
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There isn't any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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444e972
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I love you sons of bitches. You're all I read any more. You're the only ones who'll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that'll last for billions of years. You're the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simpl..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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cb9bc32
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It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ea3b2bc
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It is never a mistake to say good-bye.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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48f4e46
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We'd all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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42550c7
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A lover's a liar, To himself he lies, The truthful are loveless, Like oysters their eyes!
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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2b649c1
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Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes.
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america
communists
vietnam
bombs
vietnam-war
communism
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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52831d8
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Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth or not.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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31f07d1
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Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.
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kurt-vonnegut
maturity
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ca1e734
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Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if they would contribute mutually to each others' welfare. This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure of life, that ..
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science
freethinker
clemens-vonnegut
skeptic
funeral
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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419823e
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What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.
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dark
death
truth
favourite-quote
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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d0d3793
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We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.
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kids
history
harvard
repeating-the-past
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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888f2d9
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Don't give up on books. They feel so good--their friendly heft. The sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with your sensitive fingertips. A large part of our brains is devoted to deciding what our hands are touching, is good or bad for us. Any brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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e366c5f
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The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only the electronic clocks but the wind-up kind too. The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again. There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling I had to believe whatever clocks said -and calendars.
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time
human
life
slaughterhouse-five
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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d8a6f88
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History is merely a list of surprises,' I said. 'It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.
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kurt vonnegut |
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95f5f3a
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Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ba1343d
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Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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9f8a15a
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I think, therefore I am, therefore I am photographable.
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photos
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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ef04eba
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Her face ... was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme - a variation that made observers think, Yes - that would be another very nice way for people to look. What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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c3e0624
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I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on. I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives -- maybe fifty or a hundred people at the m..
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Kurt Vonnegut |
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5e48426
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My god-life! who can understand eve one little minute of it? 'don't try' he said 'just pretend you understand.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. |
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69b0e14
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Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn't that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education. She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she ha..
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depression
mothers
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Kurt Vonnegut |