Slaughterhouse-Five

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. *** I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.

The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again.

There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said—and calendars.

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.