I’ve been drawing all my life, just as a hobby, without really having shows or anything. It’s just an agreeable thing to do, and I recommend it to everybody. I always say to people, practice an art, no matter how well or badly [you do it], because then you have the experience of becoming, and it makes your soul grow. That includes singing, dancing, writing, drawing, playing a musical instrument. One thing I hate about school committees today is that they cut arts programs out of the curriculum because they say the arts aren’t a way to make a living. Well, there are lots of things worth doing that are no way to make a living. [Laughs.] They are agreeable ways to make a more agreeable life.
The world is too serious. To get mad at a work of art - because maybe somebody, somewhere is blowing his stack over what I’ve done - is like getting mad at a hot fudge sundae.
I am having some success with paintings now because I’m well known. People would have no interest in them otherwise, and that’s all right. I made them simply for the pleasure of creation. I speak with real painters and real artists from time to time about when they get their rocks off, and it’s the process of actually doing it. The rest of it - rave reviews or flops, or whatever - is just noise to them. It’s the doing that matters, the becoming. The rest of it doesn’t really matter.
The world is too serious. To get mad at a work of art - because maybe somebody, somewhere is blowing his stack over what I’ve done - is like getting mad at a hot fudge sundae.
I am having some success with paintings now because I’m well known. People would have no interest in them otherwise, and that’s all right. I made them simply for the pleasure of creation. I speak with real painters and real artists from time to time about when they get their rocks off, and it’s the process of actually doing it. The rest of it - rave reviews or flops, or whatever - is just noise to them. It’s the doing that matters, the becoming. The rest of it doesn’t really matter.
-Kurt Vonnegut
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