He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next
Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.
All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.
If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will. ' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.
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.
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.
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.
It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.
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.
All this happened, more or less.
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
