I am down with an A.V. Club. Really.

The A.V. Club website (www.avclub.com) came up with a compelling list of "15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will". It's classic Vonnegut -- eternal hopefulness in the random and sometimes chaotic nature of the everyday vida.

Here is my fave:

"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"

In this response to his own question—"Why bother?"—in Timequake, his last novel, Vonnegut doesn't give a tired response about the urge to create; instead, he offers a pointed answer about how writing (and reading) make a lonesome world a little less so. The idea of connectedness—familial and otherwise—ran through much of his work, and it's nice to see that toward the end of his career, he hadn't lost the feeling that words can have an intimate, powerful impact.