Thursday, April 12, 2007

A Moment of Silence

Can we have a moment of silence for the late great Kurt Vonnegut.
He died last night right here in Manhattan at the age of 84.

I've always thought of Kurt Vonnegut as a pessimist but in the New York Times obituary I discovered that he also valued kindness. To quote his character Mr. Rosewater in “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine,”

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’

May he rest in peace.

1 comment:

LMP said...

I thought of him more as a razor-tongued satirist than a pessimist, but I was unfamiliar with this quote. Thanks for sharing it. He will be missed. I hate that we've reached an age at which the people who've always been in our world are starting to leave it. I'm still not over the loss of Johnny Cash.