Standing at the Edge

Nancy's perfect, short but sweet tribute to Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest American writers, recently gone from us, inspired me to post one of my own.

I've posted some favorite quotes attributed to him below. Some are from his books, and those are noted as such. Norman Mailer hailed him as our generations' Mark Twain. "He was sort of like nobody else," said another fellow author, Gore Vidal. "Kurt was never dull." Indeed.

Asked in a 1974 interview why he was so popular on college campuses, Vonnegut said, "Well, I'm screamingly funny. I really am in the books. And I talk about stuff Billy Graham won't talk about, for instance, you know, is it wrong to kill?" And I think that was the key to his brilliance. He wrote odd and funny stories that challenged you not only to think but to examine life from outside the realm of one's own little world.

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

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

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?

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. (A Man Without a Country)

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. (Hocus Pocus)

The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. "Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me.
"The big show is inside my head," I said (Breakfast of Champions)

We are human only to the extent that our ideas remain humane. (Breakfast of Champions)

I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on. (Timequake)

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

Kurt, you will be missed...the world may be a tiny bit duller without you, but your words live on, helping to keep us standing at the edge.