My only hope was to be polite.

Having their feelings make sense is how people get their kicks.

What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.

Well, I thought, last night I paid my dues. I faced death. Now I can stay.

I didn't like the '60s because it was too important what people who had nothing to do with the war thought about it.

I don't think the people today who start hearing voices, stop eating and sleeping, and run amuck are likely to get good treatment. Having more knowledge, better diagnostic capabilities, better medications with fewer side effects, can't make up for the fact that most patients are being treated by doctors, therapists, and hospitals, who are operating under constraints and incentives that reward non-treatment, non-hospitalization, non-therapy, non-follow-up, non-care. Lost to follow-up is the best outcome a health insurer can hope for.

Without writers fooling themselves about what their books might accomplish there would be no books at all.