So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasn't like my parents. I didn't have any supposedly sacred piece of land or shoals of friends to leave behind. Nowhere has the number zero been of more philisophical value than in the United States.... and when the [train] plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with it's lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.
Kurt VonnegutSing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
Kurt VonnegutHumanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the universe has been unknown to us so far. We serve as well as we can to the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community.
Kurt VonnegutThe most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.
Kurt Vonnegut