Slaughter-House-Five by Vonnegut

"And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?"

"But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human."

"He still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist."

"It is just an illusion we have 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."

"Human beings in there took turns standing or lying down. The legs of those who stood were like fence posts driven into a warm, squirming, farting, sighing earth. The queer earth was a mosaic of sleepers who nestled like spoons."

"He said that everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoevsky. 'But that isn't enough any more,' said Rosewater."

"The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:
Oh, boy- they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
And that thought had a brother: 'There are right people to lynch.' Who? People not well connected. So it goes."

God is the best connection to have!

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I'm glad I first read "A Man Without a Country" first- because it really helps me understand this book. He talks about how he tried to write the book and how he didn't know where to start. He had seen so much and he wanted to do it justice.
"Why had it taken me twenty-three years to write about what I had experienced in Dresden? We all came home with stories, and we all wanted to cash in, one way or another. And what Mary O'Hare was saying, in effect was, 'Why don't you tell the truth for a change?'"
And I guess that's what the book turned out to be- about some idiot guy who stumbles into this situation and doesn't know what to do with it. Ridiculousness.

I enjoyed the concept of time in this book- and how we just get stuck in this chronological way of life. We can't see beyond it most of the time.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

My very good friend suggested this book to me while in Russia- having never heard of Kurt Vonnegut. They pronounce it as Vohn-e-gut. I had no idea that he is such a famous American writer.

"Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball." 

"Whenever I swim in an ocean, I feel as though I am swimming in chicken soup." 

"He was simply noticing, and surely not condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting to those in economic or social distress." 

"Don't spoil the party, but here's the truth: We have squandered our planet's resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn't going to be one." 

"What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work you do."

"How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

"[...] but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit."  

"I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren." 

"What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do." 

"What has allowed so many PPs [psychopathic personalities] to rise so high in corportations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive." 

"By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society." 

"God would have to be an atheist, because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time." 

"I'm startled that I became a writer. I don't think I can control my life or my writing." 

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn't nice, I don't know what is." 




Saul Steinberg
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Jesus Christ was an anarchist.


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Pub by Seven Stories Press