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I hated high school. For a couple of years I skipped lunch in favor of reading in the school's library, and I'm grateful to that school only for having a decent selection of Kurt Vonnegut books.

What's so great and so rare about Vonnegut? You'll find many enthusiastic reviews of his writing, but for me it's as simple as his capacity to be both brilliant and principled at the same time. I'll confidently believe what Vonnegut put forth as fiction or opinion over what other people assert to be fact.

Vonnegut's writing may be characterized as absurdist but he manages to be absurd without frivolity.

Of these, which is the least absurd:

• The 9/11 Commission Report
• The Bible
• Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five in which the central character, Billy Pilgrim, becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens to the planet Tralfamadore where he is made to live with a porn star in an intergalactic zoo

Be sure to read all three before decide on your answer.

The fact that Vonnegut has become a marginal figure in the popular culture while authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are more widely read is proof enough that either there is no god or that god is a careless imbecile. The latter being only slighty less probable.

Best wishes Mr. Vonnegut. You, and the few who are like you, deserve better than this.

I must include some quotes:

If facts weren't funny, or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them.

Beer, of course, is actually a depressant. But poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

How embarrassing to be human.

If your brains were dynamite, there wouldn’t be enough to blow your hat off.

If there is a god, he sure hates people. That’s all I can say.

Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.

we are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Kurt Vonnegut 1922 - 2007

Read more on wikiquote or better yet go buy the books!!