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"Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about."
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"A book is as private and consensual as sex."

"For the narrative to exist, so that it could be read and reread even if I was taken away. Stories outlive their writers all the time. We know plenty about Goethe and Charles Dickens from what they chose to tell, even though they have been dead for years."

"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

"I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing."

"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."

"Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions."

"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these."- Mr. Darcy."

"Tell me of your Willoughbys, Heathcliffs and Wickhams in literature and I will tell you I met them all."

"I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt."
Explore more quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."

"The name of the new religion," said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent."

"As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split."

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."

"I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth."

"Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-hunter In the jungle dark, And a Chinese dentist,And a British queen--All fit togetherIn the same machine.Nice, nice, very nice;Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice--So many different peopleIn the same device."
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