They’re not failures, you try something and it doesn’t work, and some people, you know, get fed up with this, and I’ve known some of my friends and colleagues who have just decided to give up science because they can’t stand it, but I’ve always decided, you know, if it doesn’t work, forget it and start planning the next experiment, and that’s always exciting.

I would try to write my war story, whether it was interesting or not, and try to make something out of it. I describe that process a little in the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five; I saw it as starring John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. Finally, a girl called Mary O’Hare, the wife of a friend of mine who’d been there with me, said, “You were just children then. It’s not fair to pretend that you were men like Wayne and Sinatra, and it’s not fair to future generations, because you’re going to make war look good.” That was a very important clue to me.

Never give up. No matter how hard the challenge might be, no matter how hard a moment might be in one’s life, there is still hope. From every failure I’ve had, I’ve learned a lesson that has propelled me to something else that has actually been better than whatever I thought I could never get over.

Don't be scared of the ‘what ifs,’ because the truth is, the only failure is not trying. That's the only way you can fail. Trying and having it not work out isn't failure.