Vonnegut Monday

I've been going through The Amazing Bob's bookshelves. What to keep, what to sell? Kurt Vonnegut was a fave author, along with Shakespeare and Twain. I believe it's time to get lost in a few good books.

From Slaughterhouse-Five:

- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

~~~

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

~~~

That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.

~~~

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

~~~

It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”

~~~

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes.”

And so it goes...

From Player Piano:

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

From The Sirens of Titan:

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

From Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!:

Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'.

From Hocus Pocus:

Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe.

From Breakfast of Champions:

I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking.

From Bluebeard:

All right - I'll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me.

From Mother Night:

And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.

Random words of wisdom:

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

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

Until you die .. it's all life. 

Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Iliad and The Odyssey," "Crime and Punishment," the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" — are all about what a bummer it is to be a ...human being?”

and from Timequake:

Ting-a-ling mother fucker.

Yup.