It's an astonishing skill that people can read, and read well. Very few people can read well. For instance, I have to be very careful with irony, saying something while meaning the exact opposite.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.

But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.

I just don't think people get off on language anymore. Language used to be an elevated art. It used to be for people what music can be. But people don't learn to do that anymore, so eloquence is merely a matter of waste. Who needs a good vocabulary and proper English? Eloquence - it's dead and who needs it?

Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

I was raised by a black maid by the name of Ida Young and I probably talked to her more than anybody, so whatever is nutty about me was nutty about her, too, I think because I saw a lot more of her than I did of my parents.