That’s one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.
Book 1969
Slaughterhouse-Five quotes
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About the book
Billy Pilgrim, a gentle and unremarkable American soldier, is captured in the Second World War and held as a prisoner in Dresden. He has also come unstuck in time, jumping without warning between moments of his life, and he says he was taken to the planet Tralfamadore by aliens who see all of time at once. Vonnegut's darkly funny anti-war novel draws on his own experience as a prisoner of war.
6 quotes
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…
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say…
Billy Pilgrim: Why me? Tralfamadorians: 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? Billy Pilgrim: Yes. Tralfamadorians: Well…
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has…
You know—we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my God—’ I said to myself…