Mark Vonnegut

Author

1947-05-11

Books by Mark Vonnegut

The Eden express
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Just like someone without mental illness only more so
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Heart of Caring
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Quotes by Mark Vonnegut

It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.
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What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.
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The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I felt while I played. If only I could feel that sense of total absorption in what I was doing when I was doing other things. It was more than absorption, it was spontaneity, competence, a sense of grace and playfulness, of being in touch with an inexhaustible source of energy and beauty.
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I'm subject to occasional theological nightmares. The one that leaves me in a cold sweat every time is, I arrive at the pearly gates and the first thing I'm asked is where I went to college.
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Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.
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Writing was a spiritual exercise for my father, the only thing he really believed in.
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Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.
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What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.
Read quote
The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I felt while I played. If only I could feel that sense of total absorption in what I was doing when I was doing other things. It was more than absorption, it was spontaneity, competence, a sense of grace and playfulness, of being in touch with an inexhaustible source of energy and beauty.
Read quote
Writing was a spiritual exercise for my father, the only thing he really believed in.
Read quote
I'm subject to occasional theological nightmares. The one that leaves me in a cold sweat every time is, I arrive at the pearly gates and the first thing I'm asked is where I went to college.
Read quote
Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.
Read quote
It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.
Read quote
Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.
Read quote
Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.
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My only hope was to be polite.
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I calmed myself down and decided to just wait for whatever happened.
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Well, I thought, last night I paid my dues. I faced death. Now I can stay.
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Colds, ulcers, flu, and cancer are things we get. Schizophrenia is something we are.
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As well as being one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, schizophrenia can also be one of the richest learning and humanizing experiences life offers.
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