Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

But some actors I have met possess an intelligence that I can only dream of. It's about character, it's about behavior. They understand things about people that I simply don't see.

A character, their ability or inability to laugh at themselves should always be a very, very conscious choice. It's a very big key to the nature of a human being.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

I'm interested in character and people and motivations and things like that.

I'm someone who likes to explore the complexities in people.

I have a lot of different traits to my personality, depending on who I'm around, and what the dynamic in the situation is.

Human emotion and reaction is the primary block to productivity.

People who take themselves too seriously, who can't see anything else, are usually funny.

I realised that people respond to banal things. They don't accept their own history, not participating in acceptance within their own being.

I'm very interested in what makes people tick; people are so weird and complicated.

I really do love psychology and philosophy but I'm no professional at these things. Because I love seeing the true side of humanity, as I've continued that, I have ultimately lent towards philosophy and psychology but it is not something in which I try to study.

I'd make a good psychiatrist. I can work people out very easily and very quickly. I've been like that since childhood.

It never occurred to me that I'm intimidating.

I am not really a problem personality.

My job gives me the permission to ask really great questions, like, 'Are you sure you're not pissed at him?' or, 'Is the eating really about food, or does it have something to do with your mother?' or, 'How is your sex life? I mean, I know we're here talking about your job, but I can tell this has to do with your sex life.'

We're not robots. There isn't a perfect formula for an interview and there are days when you bring too much of you and there are days, quite honestly, when you don't bring enough of you.

I think I am a pretty good at understanding each character of each person I meet.

Engineers are great at many things. They're not necessarily great at recognizing basic human psychology.

Because I am fascinated by people and what makes them behave the way they do. I think it is one of the most fascinating things in the world.

In [my] life ... I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism - man.

It's weird how you can make people feel comfortable, and then ask them an uncomfortable question, but it doesn't ruin their day.

In terms of technology and science, tomorrow does know more than yesterday; but when it comes to emotions, living with uncertainty, terror, I'm not sure we know any more than Shakespeare did, or the Buddha. And the power of new things - the iPhone or Facebook - is so strong and intoxicating that we sometimes forget that none of them can fundamentally change our relation to ourselves and to what matters.

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.

If you worry less about what people think of you, you can pick up an astonishing amount of information about them. You no longer leave conversations wondering what just happened. Other people's minds and motives are finally revealed.