★★★☆☆ | Essays | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A cranky, comical book of essays written in the last years of Vonnegut’s life. He is depressed about the state of the world and our short-term minded treatment of it. He reminds you that everyone, even those experts in power only just got here, like everyone else and no one really knows anything.
Highlights
“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.”Happiness
“A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.”
“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
“Socialism” is no more an evil word than “Christianity.” Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”
“Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. 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.”