ETA: Okay, I’ve recently found out that this quote is not Vonnegut, although he did write something similar to this in a letter to schoolchildren. That letter was posted to three–ring’s blog with her commentary posted below. Her commentary was copy-pasted to Facebook as being written by Vonnegut, and it’s been passed around that way ever since. Proof here.

I’m fixing this post with proper attribution. I did do a quick web search before posting this, but apparently it was too quick. Bleagh.

  • egrets@lemmy.worldEnglish
    116·
    20 hours ago

    This is a nice anecdote, and it’s meaningful and valuable in its own right, but it’s not Vonnegut.

    The source seems to be this 2020 Tumblr post, where the OP text is someone’s own anecdote following a Kurt Vonnegut extract. I guess someone’s read the post and got confused as to where his bit ends.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      4·
      10 hours ago

      Thanks for catching this! I fixed it. What’s remarkable is that apparently a lot of people don’t want to believe that this isn’t Vonnegut, which is why it slipped past me when I did a web search on it earlier.

      I’ve tried contacting multiple places that have published this quote to have them retract it with no results. I’ve also contacted Snopes twice with no reply.

      I was once contacted by someone who wanted to know my source for the quote because they were tracking Vonnegut’s archeology experience in his biography and wouldn’t believe me when I said it was about my own life.

    • Hoimo@ani.socialEnglish
      46·
      20 hours ago

      Oh thank god, I thought for a moment that Kurt Vonnegut wrote like a Tumblr user.

    • expr@programming.devEnglish
      21·
      18 hours ago

      The actual excerpt does read much more like Vonnegut.

      Funnily enough, even though the quote is misattributed, the sentiment is basically the same as what Vonnegut was saying, albeit less eloquent.

    • notsosure@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12·
      17 hours ago

      Well, the person who posted this has a hobby, mainly posting quotes by famous people, who are not famous at all, so as a circular argument the quote works quite well 🤪