Quotes on Slaughterhouse 5

If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.

Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.

There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. 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.

How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

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

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves... It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.

...when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.

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.

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.