Kurt Vonnegut

"The worst thing that could happen to you is to succeed before you are ready."

"Beautiful strangers are beautiful, but beautiful friends are more so."

"First rule: All persons, female and male, are softheaded and do crazy things."

"There are plenty of intellectual and spiritual resources available to anyone sincerely interested in kicking the habit of being alive."

"You fail because you fail to see your failures as lessons rather than condemnations."

"The purpose of life is to love and to be loved."

"Somebody somewhere is happy that things are as bad as they are."

"I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as paintings of the Bible on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel."

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

"I wish that every kind of vocal cords a person is given, that they would scream whenever they felt like it, to whatever ear that would listen."

"The more power a person accumulates, the more desperately he needs to believe he's wise."

"I have this disease late in life... it's too late to be helped by the democracy I love."

"War is decay, and humans are slimy bacteria all the same."

"This is the only way I know how to have a reasonable amount of happiness."

"We have to be merciful now. That is the only way to be happy."

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy."

"Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found."

"Human beings will be happier, not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice, but when they find ways to be less lonely."

"Be patient, because nothing lasts forever."

"The only way to escape the rat race is to believe that it's important to be kind."

"I like to think of my behavior in the twentieth century the way I think of behavior during the Crusades."

"Eating an orange while you peel it is one of life's great pleasures."

"There is no accounting for tastes, but I like mine."

"I want you to know that I am just as appalled as you are."

"The true test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

"Every living thing is lonely. That's just what living is."

"Books are perhaps the greatest gift one human can give to another."

"The two most important things are love and health."

"Now I've learned that the ghosts are all around us. We call them memories."

"It is a terrible thing to see the water, the light, and the faces of innocent people vanish into the sky."