1
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please – a little less love, and a little more common decency'.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
2
Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
3
Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
4
Aside from battles, the history of nations seemed to consist of nothing but powerless old poops like myself, heavily medicated and vaguely beloved in the long ago, coming to kiss the boots of young psychopaths.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
5
There is no peace, I'm sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
6
The museums in children’s minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror–to protect the children from eternal grief. For my own part, though: It would have been catastrophe if I had forgotten my sister at once. I had never told her so, but she was the person I had always written for. She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved. She was the secret of my technique. Any creation which has any wholeness and harmoniousness, I suspect, was made by an artist or inventor with an audience of one in mind. Yes, and she was nice enough, or Nature was nice enough, to allow me to feel her presence for a number of years after she died–to let me go on writing for her. But then she began to fade away, perhaps because she had more important business elsewhere.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
7
This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to judge it. This person does not care what it becomes. It is eager to become absolutely anything it is supposed to be.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
8
Yes, and our sister's sons are candid now about a creepy business which used to worry them a lot: They cannot find their mother or their father in their memories anywhere - not anywhere. The goat farmer, whose name is James Carmalt Adams, Jr., said this about it to me, tapping his forehead with his fingertips: "It isn't the museum, it should be." The museums in children's minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror - to protect the children from eternal grief.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
9
I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
10
I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency". I treated somebody well for a little while, or even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in return. Love need not have anything to do with it. (..)Love is where you find it. I think it is foolosh to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency".Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
11
In case nobody has told you, " she said, "this is the United States of America, where nobody has a right to rely on anybody else--where everybody learns to make his or her own way.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
12
Vera had not sensed my approach. She was peering into the instrument and turning knobs with child-like seriousness and ineptitude. It was obvious that she had never used a microscope before. I stole closer to her, and then I said, "Boo! "She jerked her head away from the eyepiece." Hello, " I said." You scared me to death, " she said." Sorry, " I said, and I laughed. These ancient games go on and on. It's nice they do.Kurt Vonnegut Jr.