A review by gaybf
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

fav quotes: 

• Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. 
• For those of you who have never seen one, there are two ways of closing a Manila envelope. I use both of them. First I lick the mucilage—it’s kind of sexy. 
• Abraham Lincoln said this about the silenced killing grounds at Gettysburg: “We cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men,  living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.” Poetry! It was still possible to make horror and grief in wartime seem almost beautiful. Americans could still have illusions of honor and dignity when they thought of war. The illusion of human you-know-what. That is what I call it: “The you-know-what.”
• The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn’t be poor, so their children should pay the consequences. / That’s correct. / The United States of America is cannot be expected to look after its own people. / That’s correct. / The free market will do that. / That’s correct. / The free market is an automatic system of justice. / That’s correct. /Im kidding. And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C.
• So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times. 
• To say somebody is a PP (psychopathic personality) is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or atheletes foot. The classical medieval text on PPs is the Mask of Sanity by dr Harvey Cleckley …. these were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything. PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! and what syndrome best describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll (Joe Biden). / So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation. 
• (Uncle Alex) would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
• Those of us who had imagination circuits built can look in someone’s face and see stories there; to everyone else, a face will just be a face. And there, I’ve just used a semi-colon, which at the outset I told you never to use. It is to make a point that I did it. The point is: rules only take us so far, even good ones.
• I said, “Saul, I am a novelist, and many of my friends are novelists and good ones, but when we talk I keep feeling we are in two very different businesses. What makes me feel that way?” Six seconds passed and then he said, “it’s very simple. There are two sorts of artists, one not being in the least superior to the other. But one responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself.” I said, “Saul, are you gifted?” Six seconds passed, and then he growled, “No, but what you respond to in any work of art is the artists struggle against his or her limitations.”