Charles Mallinson in Ch. 19; Charles Mallinson's mother, Maggie, and his uncle, Gavin Stevens, besides being their parents' only children, are twins.
The Town (1957)
“I think yet again of my father, who struggled to become a painter after he was forced into early and unwelcome retirement by the Great Depression. He has reason to be optimistic about his new career, since the early stages of his pictures, whether still or portraits or landscapes, were full of pow. Mother, meaning to be helpful, would say of each one: "That's really wonderful, Kurt. Now all you have to do is finish it." He would then ruin it. I remember a portrait he did of his only brother, Alex, who was an insurance salesman, which he called "Special Agent". When he roughed it in, his hand and eye conspired with a few bold strokes to capture several important truths about Alex, including a hint of disappointment. Uncle Alex was a proud graduate of Harvard, who would rather have been a scholar of literature than an insurance man.
When Father finished the portrait, made sure every square inch of masonite had its share of paint, Uncle Alex had disappeared entirely. We had a drunk and lustful Queen Victoria instead. This was terrible.”
Fates Worse than Death (1991)
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Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: There are the men who say, "He preached tenderness and kindliness and filial love, yet He would not heed His mother and His brothers when they sought Him in the streets of Jerusalem."
They do not know that His mother and brothers in their loving fear would have had Him return to the bench of the carpenter, whereas He was opening our eyes to the dawn of a new day.
His mother and His brothers would have had Him live in the shadow of death, but He Himself was challenging death upon yonder hill that He might live in our sleepless memory.
Left Hand, Right Hand!, Bk. II, ch. 6.
Of the portrait-painter John Singer Sargent's relationship with his clients.
Speech at MIT (1985), referring to his brother Bernard Vonnegut, and the choices available to scientists and the intelligent, to serve humanity, or to betray it, as published in Fates Worse Than Death (1991), Ch. 12
Various interviews
Context: My brother got his doctorate in 1938, I think. If he had gone to work in Germany after that, he would have been helping to make Hitler's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in Italy, he would have been helping to make Mussolini's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in Japan, he would have been helping to make Tojo's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in the Soviet Union, he would have been helping to make Stalin's dreams come true. He went to work for a bottle manufacturer in Butler, Pennsylvania, instead. It can make quite a difference not just to you but to humanity: the sort of boss you choose, whose dreams you help come true.
Hitler dreamed of killing Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, mental defectives, believers in democracy, and so on, in industrial quantities. It would have remained only a dream if it hadn't been for chemists as well educated as my brother, who supplied Hitler's executioners with the cyanide gas known as Zyklon B. It would have remained only a dream if architects and engineers as capable as my father and grandfather hadn't designed extermination camps — the fences, the towers, the barracks, the railroad sidings, and the gas chambers and crematoria — for maximum ease of operation and efficiency.
remark on his cooperative relation with Jasper Johns, to his biographer Calvin Tomkins
As quoted in Lives of the great twentieth century artists, Edward Lucie-Smith, London 1986, p. 31
1980's
Travis Parker, Chapter 15, p. 199
2000s, The Choice (2007)
Rachel Notley during her 2015 victory speech. "Notley's Way: How the Alberta premier became determined." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/the-alberta-ndps-rachel-notley-she-is-a-child-of-the-party/article24338069/ May 8, 2015.