Kurt Vonnegut became unstuck in time for the last time yesterday.
Let’s take a moment and appreciate the crazy old bastard, eh?
I leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Slaughterhouse-Five:
“Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,” murmered Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest. “Go take a flying fuck at the moon.”
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Kurt Vonnegut
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
From: Sirens of Titan
And my favorite, “How embarassing to be human.”
I haven’t been this sad since Vincent Price died.
Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
and a more appropriate quote I just saw…
To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon.
Vonnegut made a major impression on me in my youth. It was the 60’s and his novels were revolutionary. RIP, Billy Pilgrim.
“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?” Kurt Vonnegut
sniff, sniff. :*-(
I remember reading “Breakfast of Champions” when I was a itty bitty teen. And I can also remember an essay he wrong later about a serial killer who had come very close to his daughter.
The humor was gone and there stood the frightened father. RIP Mr. V.
I was very sad to hear this news today; Slaughterhouse Five was one of those books that made a huge impression on me when I was a teen.
I tried reading it again, but like all great fiction, it’s a book for a specific time and place in one’s life.
🙂
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.” -Kurt Vonnegut
Mollie said it all.
I remember seeing Vonnegut on TV and being amazed at his presence, so comfortable with his rustic ugliness and somehow managing to achieve an urbane confidence because of it.
“What, incidentally, was a pregnant mother of two doing, operating a vacuum cleaner on Mother’s Day? She was practically asking for a bullet between the eyes, wasn’t she?”
– Deadeye Dick
What a numbing loss. He was one of the smartest and sharpest writers I’ve ever read. He’s a helluvan act to have to follow.
No new books to anticipate from Kurt—this is tragic. Somehow he had always seemed immortal to me.
RIP
A sad day indeed.
“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Kurt Vonnegut”
Ah, but did the man ever read Heinlein?
I still have scars from that one book… *shudder*
I love him. Love. Him.
Can’t remember where I read it, but I think it was from an intro he wrote for one of his novels. He was quoting a brother, or perhaps a brother-in-law, who felt overwhelmed by a new baby in the household; but true to form for Vonnegut, he generalized the quote into a philosophy of life. The quote: “Here am I, cleaning shit off of everything.”
At work, a week doesn’t go by where I don’t remember that quote at least once or twice.
Yes, “we’re all here on earth just to fart around.”
And don’t you forget it.
*sigh*
I am really going to miss knowing he was around to write sensible books like ‘Slaughterhouse V’ and ‘A Man Without a Country’. He wasn’t afraid to say what he meant to say.
I’m reading ‘Welcome to the Monkey House’ in his honor today.
‘If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reasons,’ writes Bokonon, ‘that person may be a member of your karass.
– Cat’s Cradle
My mom wrote her thesis on Cat’s Cradle, and I first read it in the fifth grade. I haven’t stopped reading it since. Even though it’s a pack of foma.
We love you, Kurt.
I love his books. Nearly 30 years after first reading Cat’s Cradle I still find myself quote bits from it often.
Busy, busy, busy
Lucky mud
That’s funny. My favorite quote from Slaughterhouse V is: “Incidentally, he had a tremendous wang. You never know who’ll get one.”
I laughed myself stupid on the Greyhound Bus from NY to Washington DC at that.