Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

• Somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail.
• There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
• The trouble with the world was that people were still superstitious instead of scientific. He said if everybody would study science more, there wouldn't be all the trouble there was.
• I think you'll find that everybody does about the same amount of thinking. Scientists simply think about things in one way, and other people think about things in others.
• Any scientist who couldn't explain o an eight-year old what he was doing was a charlatan.
• We'd all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.
• New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
• Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
• Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.
• Man is vile, and man makes nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing.
• People taking the last rites have a way of dying on cue.
• I'm grateful for things that work. Not many things do work, you know.
• The truth was that life was as short and brutish and mean as ever.
• My God--life! Who can understand even one little minute of it? "Don't try," he said. "Just pretend you understand."
• Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.
• People are unkind sometimes without meaning to be.
• I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific.
• It is never a mistake to say goodbye.
• When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
• Without accurate records of the past, how can men and women be expected to avoid making serious mistakes in the future?
• Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.
• Think of what paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.
• Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

1/29/2012

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

• You're going to die and leave me alone.
• It's not news that I'm going to die one of these days. You are too. This is not news, Sweet Pea.
• Sex heals, anxiety kills.
• Her therapist says I am afraid of stridency. She says I am addicted to sweetness. I do not understand why it is an addiction simply because I do my best to think pretty pink and blue thoughts.
• Can you reclaim that free-girl smile, or is it like virginity--once you lose it, that's it?
• You must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show.
• What do you mean, you "don't know how to love"? Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planted or books written or what Goddamn-have-you? Do you think people would even get out of the bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love? You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, Kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors.
• If God hides in details, then maybe so do we.
• Who has time to write memoirs? I'm still living my memoirs.
• You can't figure me out. I can't figure me out. It's life, Sidda. You don't figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride.
• To me, smells are like an invisible person that a lot of people forget is even there. I would rather lose my eyes than my sense of smell.
• She wanted to soak the words "time management" out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down into the uncharted beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.
• I just know that somehow everything the four of us do is important. I believe that years from now people are going to want to know about us.
• Is jealousy a gene passed down like blonde hair or brown eyes?
• You know how some people, when they're together, they somehow make you feel more hopeful? Make you feel like the world is not the insane place it really is? Like when you see a couple on the dance floor who really know how to waltz. You want to wait till the music stops, and then run up and congratulate them.
• There is more that is right with me than there is wrong with me.
• If you wept, sooner or later you'd laugh.
• I'm just going to think me some pretty pink and blue thoughts.
• Uncountable the number of breaths I've taken for granted in my life.
• There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers.
• Vivi worked hard to make every birthday a good one. It was as though she had made a covenant with herself that she would do anything within her power not to let a birthday go bad.
• Use everything in your life to create your art.
• All God's children have different ideas about healing.
• God don't like ugly, Mes Petites Choux. Ça va? No matter what they'll try to tell you, Bébés! God don't make ugly, and God don't like ugly. Le Bon Dieu is a god of loveliness, and don't yall forget it!
• Life is short, but it is wide. This too shall pass.
• Say there is no truth. Say there are only scraps that we feebly try to sew together.
• I try to believe that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they would if they could see that crack.
• There is no escape from our mothers. I don't even want to escape anymore. Maybe we aren't meant to escape our mothers.
• Sometime the bébé she has to get sick to get well.
• The only way any of us are going to stay out of The Betty is to talk.
• In the land of the blind, the nearsighted man is king.
• The married state is a road which passes over hilly regions. You accepted a life of duty and responsibilities when you received the sacrament of matrimony.
• We have to keep these men in the dark, you know, or the whole world would fall to pieces.
• Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats--let you know if you're off course.
• Maybe people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.
• One breath at a time, Pal, it's the only way.
• Words lead to deeds. They prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness.
• The alligators can get you at any age, Buddy. But the worst thing you can do is freeze.
• We are each flawed, and in search of solace.
• My mother's love is not perfect. My mother's love is good enough. My lover's love is good enough. Maybe I am good enough.
• The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?
• Sometimes lost treasures can be reclaimed.
• We're all hanging by a thread in the canyon of doom. We're all each other's keepers.

1/13/2012