All posts filed under: On Writing, Writers and Books

From ‘A Man Without a Country’ : An Excerpt From an Interview With Kurt Vonnegut

DAVID BRANCACCIO: There’s a little sweet moment, I’ve got to say, in a very intense book– your latest– in which you’re heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say– I’m getting– I’m going to buy an envelope. KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah. DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then? KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers …

A Father’s Advice to His Son

As a young boy my mother made me learn a sentence. The magic aspect of that one line was that it did not end with a full stop rather it took a flight of fancy and inspiration even before it ended. And She must have said this sentence a thousand times by the time i was twelve as few other sentences had started arriving at her memory doorstep, but by then I had found the keys to the roots for reaching to the tree top. “If you want to be a happy adult Nara, she used to say, read the 3R’s. And those 3Rs were; Ruskin Bond, Roald Dahl and Rudyard Kipling. As I look back today, I couldn’t have asked for any other direction as a child from anyone. She set me up early in my life filling it with curiosity, travels and compassion towards all beings and nature. As I will be on the Road for next one month, I might not be able to write a lot about things I had thought …