"Kurt Vonnegut - God Bless You Dr Kevorkian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vonnegut Kurt)

ing to reinstate my health and life insurance polices, if
possible. But other journalists, and perhaps even
tourists, will surely follow the safe two-way path to

Eternity I pioneered. I beg them to be content, as I
learned to be, with interviews they are able to conduct
on the hundred yards or so of vacant lot between the

far end of the blue tunnel and the Pearly Gates.
To go through the Pearly Gates, no matter how
tempting the interviewee on the other side, as I myself
discovered the hard way, is to run the risk that crotch-
ety Saint Peter, depending on his mood, may never let
you out again. Think of how heartbroken your friends
and relatives would be if, by going through the Pearly

Gates to talk to Napoleon, say, you in effect commit-
ted suicide.




About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of
you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish

nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of
any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have
tried to behave decently without any expectation of
rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-

American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in
our Middle West about the time of our Civil War,
called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same

sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut
wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what

can it matter whether he was God or not?"

I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message

of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I

wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as

soon be a rattlesnake."

I am honorary president of the American Humanist