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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.
“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.
He could scarcely distinguish between sleep and wakefulness now, on the third day, found no important differences, either, between walking and standing still.
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
When asked which myth he meant to represent, Le Fèvre replied that there were thousands of myths like that, with the woman a mortal and the pony a god. He was sentenced to six months in prison. He died there of pneumonia. So it goes.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”
The door was flung open from inside. Light leaped out through the door, escaped from prison at 186,000 miles per second.
And on and on it went—that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes.
Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don’t want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more. Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.
“That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.”
“Have a good nap, did you?” said the porter. “Yes,” said Billy. “Man,” said the porter, “you sure had a hard-on.”
Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. Once this is understood, the disagreeable behavior of American enlisted men in German prisons ceases to be a mystery.
It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
