"There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity -- the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, 'Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.'
When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, 'You're a man now.' So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.
Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a male can't be a man unless he'd gone to war.
But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'
So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. 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.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)
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from a recent commission! The commissioners husband works in dam maintenance on the great lakes I believe, I was asked to illustrate him and three coworkers into the drop capital, and include lampreys if I was able.
they specifically paid me to create the original, scan, do digital cleanup and print three more copies
might turn this into a print, they gave explicit permission to do so, what do yall think?
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Giveaw@y: We’re giving away 12 vintage paperback classics! Won’t these look lovely on your shelf? =)
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Every sentence must do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action.
– Kurt Vonnegut
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Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
Kurt Vonnegut
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"You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."
~ Kurt Vonnegut
[Ian Sanders]
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“To practice any art, no matter how well, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.” — Kurt Vonnegut
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