I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”

Vonnegut offers this advice as part of his late-career, semi-autobiographical reflections on family, memory, and everyday grace. The line is presented as a lesson he says he learned from his Uncle Alex, who would pause during small moments of contentment—often in ordinary domestic or social settings—and call attention to them with the phrase “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” In the book, Vonnegut frames the habit as a deliberate practice of noticing happiness while it is happening, rather than only recognizing it in hindsight, a theme consistent with his humanistic, anti-pretension voice.

Vonnegut’s point is not that happiness is constant or easily achieved, but that it is often unrecognized when it arrives in small, unremarkable forms. The instruction to “notice” happiness turns gratitude into a deliberate practice: naming the moment anchors it in memory and counters the human tendency to normalize good fortune and fixate on what is missing. The plainspoken, almost comic phrasing (“If this isn’t nice…”) also reflects Vonnegut’s style—using humor to deliver moral seriousness—suggesting that meaning and consolation can be found in modest experiences rather than grand triumphs.

1) “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
2) “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is!”