Slaughter House 5 Quotes

Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.

– Why me? – 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? – Yes. – Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.

If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.

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

It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.

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

I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.

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

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

She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all.

The most important thing I learned […] 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.

I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

The umpire had comical news. The congregation had been theoretically spotted from the air by a theoretical enemy. They were all theoretically dead now. The theoretical corpses laughed and ate a hearty noontime meal.

The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty.