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.
The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact how hard money is to come by, and, there, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.
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.
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?
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.
All this happened, more or less.
Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.
- Why me? - That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? - Yes. - Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.
Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
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
Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.
It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.
All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
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.
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.
Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.
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.