That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.
There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.
The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.
What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes necessary someone says: war is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being.
There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.
The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.
It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?
The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. I suppose they will all want dignity, I said.
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.
. . . when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.
Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?
All this happened, more or less.
Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.
Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.
If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
