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" I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I've brought scientific thinking to literature. There's been very little gratitude for this. "

Kurt Vonnegut

Gratitude

Chemistry

Thinking

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" Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? "

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" Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden. "

" There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia. "

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" Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John. "

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Did

Jonah

" Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them. "

" I left the Middle West for Schenectady because the General Electric Company offered me a more congenial, better paying job than did anyone else. "

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" The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal. "

" There is never a shortage anywhere of lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment, as though it were nothing more than a clause in a lease from a crooked slumlord. "

" I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours. "

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Poor

Planet

" I'm screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I'm funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that's appreciated by young people. "

" This country is being managed to death, being public related to death. "

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Country

Public

" Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time? "

" True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country. "

" When I'm being funny, I try not to offend. I don't think much of what I've done has been in really ghastly taste. I don't think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them. "

" I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work more than four hours. "

" I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read 'Democracy in America' by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government. "

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" I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. It's as though I had taken over the family Esso station. "

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" My cash cows, the slick magazines, were put out of business by TV. "

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Cash

Business

" I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us. "

" The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest. "

" Never index your own book. "

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