Welcome to my commonplace blog

The goal of this blog is to preserve a few ideas and quotes from books I read. In the old days when books were not so readily available, people kept "commonplace books" where they copied choice passages they wanted to be able to remember and perhaps reuse. The idea got picked up by V.F.D. and it's common knowledge that most of that organization's volunteers have kept commonplace books, and so have Laura and I.

I'm sure there are many other Internet sites and blogs dedicated to the same idea. But this one is mine. Feel free to look around and leave comments, but not spam.

11 August 2012

2BR02B (Kurt Vonnegut)

A short story by Vonnegut; a typical anti-utopia based on the control of population growth. Sad and fatalistic. The title refers to the phone number of a suicide hotline, and it reads as "to be or not to be" (get it?). Dreary, but it's still Vonnegut.


Quotes:

The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as long as possible—to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever. All the answers that the painter could think of were grim.

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