New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.

Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.

I urge you to please notice when you are happy.

The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears.

On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin - who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.

All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.