Help From His Friends Fulghum Pays Tribute To His Geratest Influences

Robert Fulghum has written six books and sold 15 million copies, but for his seventh book, he rounded up some outside assistance.

“Words I Wish I Wrote” (HarperCollins, $20, 224 pages) contains passages by Albert Camus, James Baldwin, Theodore Roosevelt, E.B. White, Eric Idle and Jerry Garcia, to name a few. They all had an influence on the philosophy of Fulghum, the Seattle writer who wrote the huge international best-seller, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

Reading “Words I Wish I Wrote” is like wandering into a friend’s study, perusing his books and asking him to point out the passages that have shaped his life. With a wise enough host, this can be an enlightening experience.

And Fulghum is a wise host. In his 60 years, he has worked as a ranch hand, singing cowboy, ditch digger, IBM employee and, for 22 years, the parish minister of a Unitarian Church in Seattle. He has spent his entire life pondering questions that many of us never even ask. Compiling “Words I Wish I Wrote” sent him on a trip back into that intellectual journey.

“I used to read a lot of heavy, thick philosophy and theology and -ologies of all kinds,” said Fulghum, laughing. “…I used to read a lot of Kierkegaard, for example. Right now, I look at Kierkegaard and I think in all honesty, ‘What is this man talking about?’ But at the time, I was certain I knew.”

He said the process of compiling the book was an eye-opener.

“The fun part was reading again the things I had read 20 or 30 years ago with very different eyes and very different life experiences,” said Fulghum. “It took a long time, because I kept stopping and re-reading novels when I was just trying to look for a quotation.”

In the process, he learned that the arguments that once inflamed him (and society) were superficial.

“I realized that the differences we seemed to have were differences in the use of metaphors,” said Fulghum. “We were arguing over not what we really feel, but the language we use to describe what we feel. … I think this is quite true when we talk about religious beliefs as well. I think that at base, we’re all trying to talk about the same things, but we get to argue about the specifics of metaphors - which now at age 60, I think has gotten to be a useless exercise.”

He began “Words I Wish I Wrote” by going back through his journals and files. He ended up with an enormous pile, enough for a book three times as thick. Then he threw out the passages that were already widely known, leaving in the ones that were more provocative and surprising. The result is surprisingly revealing about Fulghum himself.

“People have asked if it should go in the quotations part of the library,” said Fulghum. “No, it’s very much more personal than that. It has actually turned out to be more of an intellectual and spiritual memoir than anything else.”

Arranging for the rights was arduous, but it led to some interesting correspondence between Fulghum and the other authors or their relatives. His only disappointment came when he found that Thornton Wilder’s estate refuses to grant rights to quote anything from “Our Town.” Most others gave permission gladly.

‘Pete Seeger … I asked him permission to use one thing, and he sent me five things he thought should be in the book,” said Fulghum.

He put the book together in a way that encourages browsing.

“I fully designed it with the thought that people would not pick it up and begin at the beginning,” said Fulghum.

As for the ethics of publishing a book largely written by other people, Fulghum is donating his net royalties to Human Rights Watch. In fact, the project was conceived as a way to benefit human rights work.

Fame came to Fulghum late in his life, and he has handled it with grace. He still lives most of the year on a houseboat on Lake Union in Seattle with his physician wife. He spends the rest of his time in the island of Crete, where he has been busy writing a trilogy, a novel set in Greece.

“In Seattle I get distracted in all kinds of different directions,” he said. “I do a lot of things for charity, and once people know you do it, you get asked a lot. I really hate telling people, ‘No, I can’t.’ So it’s easier for my assistant to say, ‘Well, he’d love to come to your event, but he’s in Greece.”’

Now that “Words I Wish I Wrote” is on the shelves, he keeps running across more words he wishes he wrote. In fact, he even saw some particularly wise ones on the rear end of a car.

“I was in Santa Fe last year and I saw a bumper sticker that almost made me drive off the road,” he said, laughing. “It said, ‘Don’t believe everything you think.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: READING Robert Fulghum will read from his new book, “Words I Wish I Wrote,” and sign autographs tonight at 7 at Auntie’s Bookstore. Tickets are sold out.