A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

During a career that spanned half a century, Kurt Vonnegut published 14 novels and three short-story collections. His work was satirical and his humor was often dark. Vonnegut did not see the world through rose-colored glasses, but neither was he pessimistic or fatalistic. He was, fundamentally, a humanist — and, like fellow writer Isaac Asimov, an honorary president of the American Humanist Association. This quote, from Vonnegut’s novel “Sirens of Titan,” is spoken by the character Constant, who has finally realized that love is, indeed, a fundamental purpose of human life. It’s an idea often expressed by Vonnegut himself. As he wrote in his novel “Cat’s Cradle,” “There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.”