Kurt Vonnegut Quotes About Slaughter House 5
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How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
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Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
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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.
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When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the 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 what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.
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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.
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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.
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It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
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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.
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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.
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And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.
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And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
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Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.
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The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.
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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 always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?
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They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
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Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
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Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact how hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.
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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.
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All this happened, more or less.
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That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.
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She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.
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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
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America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.
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Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.
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...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.
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All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.
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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.
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People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.
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And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?
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One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.
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