The row was actually about everything in creation, but it had for its subject of the moment the boy's mustache.

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profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.

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You can't write novels without a touch of paranoia. I'm paranoid as an act of good citizenship, concerned about what the powerful people are up to.

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This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to judge it. This person does not care what it becomes. It is eager to become absolutely anything it is supposed to be.

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When I write, I feel like an armless leg less man with a crayon in his mouth.

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A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

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When I used to come home from school Mother used to ask me what happened that day, and I'd tell her,— said Miss Pefko. "Now I come home from work and she asks me the same question, and all I can say is" — Miss Pefko shook her head and let her crimson lips flap slackly— "I dunno, I dunno, I dunno.""If there's something you don't understand," urged Dr. Breed, —ask Dr. Horvath to explain it. He's very good at explaining.— He turned to me. "Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.""Then I'm dumber than an eight-year-old," Miss Pefko mourned. —I don't even know what a charlatan is.

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When I used to come home from school Mother used to ask me what happened that day, and I'd tell her,— said Miss Pefko. "Now I come home from work and she asks me the same question, and all I can say is" — Miss Pefko shook her head and let her crimson lips flap slackly— "I dunno, I dunno, I dunno.""If there's something you don't understand," urged Dr. Breed, —ask Dr. Horvath to explain it. He's very good at explaining.— He turned to me. "Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.""Then I'm dumber than an eight-year-old," Miss Pefko mourned. —I don't even know what a charlatan is.

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When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

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I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.

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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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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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It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

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This is Sunday, and the question arises, what'll I start tomorrow?

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Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

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Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn't even nothing or once.

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

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Actually, to be an effective person politically in this country, I think you have to be thirty or over, and also you have to be rich, well-placed, you have to be close to power. And I don't think that young people, because they look young, can do much, as I think they are counterproductive.

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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.

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I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.

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Kurt Vonnegut

Books by Kurt Vonnegut

Quotes by Kurt Vonnegut