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“We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears.” So it goes.
“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 being Queen Elizabeth the First of England, and Billy was supposedly Christopher Columbus.
“Um,” said Billy Pilgrim.
“Really,” said Billy Pilgrim. He had already seen a lot of their marriage, thanks to time-travel, knew that it was going to be at least bearable all the way.
It was a simple-minded thing for a female Earthling to do, to associate sex and glamor with war.
“I’m not,” said Billy. This was a lie, of course. He hadn’t told anybody about all the time-traveling he’d done, about Tralfamadore and so on.
That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.
“Man,” said the porter, “you sure had a hard-on.”
a former American
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.
The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”
This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
“Of course.” He had been dozing.
And so on. It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
Billy was reminded of fantastic architecture in Dresden, before it was bombed.
He had had a wet dream about Montana Wildhack.
assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive still in moments the boy would see again and again.
“Don’t think I haven’t tried,” the Blue Fairy Godmother answered.
“Nobody ever got it from Lazzaro,” he said, “who didn’t have it coming.”
So I promised him I’d have this silly cocksucker shot after the war.”
I, Billy Pilgrim, the tape begins, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976.
women he was going to make fuck him, whether they wanted to or not.
If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies. So it goes.
The boots fit perfectly. Billy Pilgrim was Cinderella, and Cinderella was Billy Pilgrim.
Somebody laughed. Billy wondered what the joke was.
Somebody behind him in the boxcar said, “Oz.” That was I. That was me. The only other city I’d ever seen was Indianapolis, Indiana.
It was Fate, of course, which had costumed him—Fate, and a feeble will to survive.
It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines.
They looked like golliwogs, like white people pretending to be black for the laughs they could get.
He supposed that they were part of an amazing new phase of World War Two. It was all right with him. Everything was pretty much all right with Billy.
They were, in fact, distant cousins, something they never found out.
She asked Billy Pilgrim what he was supposed to be, Billy said he didn’t know. He was just trying to keep warm.
One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now.
“Hell no,” said Kilgore Trout. “You think money grows on trees?”
It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
burning jellied gasoline on human beings.
She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away. She hadn’t had even one baby yet. She used birth control.
Billy liked him, but didn’t know him very well. Billy couldn’t help suspecting that there wasn’t much to know about Robert.
Poor Valencia was unconscious, overcome by carbon monoxide. She was a heavenly azure.
“He scares me,” she whispered to her husband about Billy Pilgrim.
The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons.
It was preparing letters and lectures about the flying saucers, the negligibility of death, and the true nature of time.
“He’s simply echoing things we say,” said Rumfoord. “Oh,” said Lily. “He’s got echolalia now.” “Oh.”
that an inconvenient person, one whose death he wished for very much, for practical reasons, was suffering from a repulsive disease.
to ignore the unhappy ones—to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by.
The Americans had treated their form of transportation as though it were no more sensitive than a six-cylinder Chevrolet.
When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war.
According to the Tralfamadorian concept, of course, Nathan was still alive somewhere and always would be.
Twenty years in the future, those girls would still be young, would still be smiling or smoldering or simply looking stupid, with their legs wide open.
