Fave Quote of the Book: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Amazon describes it like this:

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

One of my favorite bits:
The narrator reads a book by a doctor who write horror novels. In that book, the narrator reads, "No art is possible without a dance with death" (Vonnegut 21).

I am no doctor, and I am too much of a scaredy-cat to write or read horror novels, but this one sentence really spoke to me. Seeing as how I have cancer, and have had three brain surgeries in the last nine months, I'd argue that I've danced with death, at least a little, here and there. I'd also argue that some of my best writing has come about after my diagnosis, if I may be so bold as to toot my own horn here.

My diagnosis has made me even more cognizant of my own mortality, but beyond that, I've realized that I have so much left to say. The words pile up inside of me, as I write this blog, letters and cards to my loved ones (SNAIL MAIL!), in my own journal, the book that I'm writing. I have so many words, and even when I'm exhausted from the terrible insomnia, and even when I'm goldfishing, I've stories and poems and memories to share. I write and I write, and eventually, I sleep, and I read, and I write. If for nothing else, this has been a blessing for inspiring me to put ass to chair and hands on the keyboard, and I write and I write.

So it goes.