A Quote by Michael Dirda
?e [Kurt Vonnegut] felt that life was largely a crap shoot and that we simply need to muddle on as best we can, being as kind and loving to one another as possible, right now. It's a pretty good philosophy, no matter what one's religious beliefs or lack of them.
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It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.
Any writer my age almost can't get away from being influenced by Kurt Vonnegut, partially because of his simple, clear way of stating things. To read Vonnegut is to learn how to use economy words.
I used to agree with Kurt Vonnegut, who said that the human race has a snowball's chance in hell of being around a hundred years from now.
Whatever Kurt Vonnegut's ultimate status will be in the annals of literature, he was important to a lot of people right now. That's what most writers really care about.
In seventh grade, with some vague sense that I wanted to be a writer, I crouched in the junior high school library stacks to see where my novels would eventually be filed. It was right after someone named Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. So I grabbed a Vonnegut book, 'Breakfast of Champions' and immediately fell in love.
To assert that it is possible to establish peace between men of different nations is simply to assert that man, whatever his ethnical background, his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable of reason.
All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones. I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.
It's pretty clear in how things are moving in empirically supported treatments that we're going to be speaking to the culture in a different voice. It's going to have some echoes of some of the deeper clinical and spiritual and religious traditions that had wisdom in it. If we're not going to get there through religious means and things of that kind, we're going to have to find a way to put it in the culture in a different way, because we need something right now other than yet another cable shoutcast or yet another Internet Web page showing us the cellulite on the actress's rear end.
I don't care if religious people consider me amoral because I lack their beliefs in God. I do however care deeply about efforts to turn religious beliefs into law and those efforts benefit greatly from the conviction that individually and collectively we cannot be good without God.
Kurt Vonnegut and I - it's not an exaggeration to say we were best friends. And I grew up just idolizing him.
Kurt Vonnegut said, 'The best of Bob and Ray is virtually indistinguishable from the worst.' I'm sure he meant that as a compliment.
When people ask me what philosophy is, I say philosophy is what you do when
you don't know what the right questions are yet. Once you get the questions
right, then you go answer them, and that's typically not philosophy, that's
one science or another. Anywhere in life where you find that people aren't
quite sure what the right questions to ask are, what they're doing, then,
is philosophy.
Kurt Vonnegut talks about how we know there is another family out there and when we find it we get this almost instinctive sense of belonging. And that is how I felt in Enniskillen in 1977 when I realized there were these people of all ages, whatever their religion, from different backgrounds, who were bound together by a love of plays and acting.
Kurt Vonnegut speaking to John Irving while Irving was administering the Heimlich maneuver in response to Vonnegut's uncontrollable coughing..."John,stop- I am not choking. I have emphysema.
I want the people of New Jersey to jump off a cliff like Kurt Vonnegut so I can show them how to fly. This way, nobody needs to grow any wings, which would be impossible anyway because we're humans and not some kind of bird.
But I've always felt a need to have a life which is completely separate - at least as far as possible - from the kind of illusory lifestyle that comes with being a celebrity.
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