Kurt Vonnegut Drawings

once said, “Just because you have talent doesn’t mean you have to do something with it.”2 This magnificent “underachiever” died before her time, at age forty-one, of breast cancer.

WORDS

The imagination circuit is taught to respond to the most minimal of cues. A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

THINGS

The most satisfied of all painters is the one who can become intoxicated for hours or days or weeks or years with what his or her hands and eyes can do with art materials, and let the rest of the world go hang.

LINES

Was there ever a more cunning experiment devised to make the unconscious reveal itself? Has any psychological experiment yielded a more delightful suggestion than this one: that there is a part of the mind without ambition or information, which nonetheless is expert on what is beautiful?

LOOKING AT THINGS

Good examples of harmless toots are some of the things children do. They get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks (throwing little ones, looking under big ones)… Only two people are involved: the child and the Universe. The child does a little something to the Universe, and the Great Big Everything does something funny or beautiful or sometimes disappointing or scary or even painful in return.

He once told me that he thought people worked out their neuroses through art.

Whether it is music, literature, theater, or the visual arts, he believed practicing the arts saved lives

Where is home? I’ve wondered where home is, and realized, it’s not Mars or someplace like that, it’s Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there’s no way I can get there again.

My father once suggested that I make a piece of artwork and then burn it, as a spiritual exercise. I wanted to say, but didn’t, “Go burn all that writing you did this morning!”