While I was working on The Passionate Programmer I had the following Kurt Vonnegut quote (from A Man Without A Country) at the top of the introduction. Right before we published it, my editor reminded me that we had to get permission to print it. I was unable to reach anyone from Kurt Vonnegut’s estate on time, so I commented the quote out in the book’s source.
This is how The Passionate Programmer was supposed to begin:
"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'" -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
May 26th, 2009 at 09:07 PM
That’s odd; including a short quote should be considered fair use. At least, that’s my experience in academic publishing. Was there some explanation about why you needed permission?
May 28th, 2009 at 02:00 PM
Great quote. I was saying something similar to my wife last night. You have to make an effort to notice when things are going good or when things could have been so much worse. It’s like when you’re sick or when you have a bad scrape on your arm. You never noticed what it was like to not be in pain, until you’re in pain. Course, Vonnegut is so much more succinct :).
June 3rd, 2009 at 06:23 PM
It’s a sad state of affairs when legal paranoia over copyright makes you believe that you need to prior authorization to quote a single sentence. The quote is great, though.