“A sappy woman sent me a letter a few years back. She knew I was sappy, too, which is to say a lifelong northern Democrat in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt mode, a friend of the working stiffs. She was about to have a baby, not mine, and wished to know if it was a bad thing to bring such a sweet and innocent creature into a world as bad as this one is. I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society. Perhaps some of you are or will become saints for her child to meet.”
– Knowing What’s Nice – Kurt Vonnegut Jr,
Comments 2
That's lovely.
Yeah, I'm secure enough with myself to admit that this little blurb hit me *just right* when I read it and I burst out crying. (Haven't done yet for a long time! Well, library school excepted but that was a different type of crying!)
Kurt Vonnegut is one of my idols and probably my favourite writer of all-time.