The only time I ever cried when hearing of a celebrity death was finding out that Kurt Vonnegut died in April 2007. He is one of my heroes, and the world was better because he was part of it for a little while. His birthday was November 11, Armistice Day.
“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”
― from Timequake
“I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.’”
— from A Man Without a Country
“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
— from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.”
— “The Noodle Factory,” speech given at the dedication of the Shain Library at Connecticut College, New London
“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, “It might have been.”
— from Cat’s Cradle
This is the Kurt Vonnegut section of my bookshelves, that houses some of my most treasured books:
Vonnegut’s zany and surreal world reflects the absurdity of our own and really bent my mind to different modes of thinking. His work has inspired my own visual arts for quite some time and I created a tribute illustration of the author with the help of an old typewriter. You can see it at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/11/happy-birthday-mr-vonnegut.html and tell me how his work and words also affected you.