American Novels

""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." (p. 86)"

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. (p. 86)"

"Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "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." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it. "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." (pp. 76-77)"

"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed. (pp. 74-75)"

"If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob! (p. 67)"

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. (p. 39)"

"As part of the gun crew, he had helped to fire one shot in anger — from a 57-millimeter antitank gun. The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty. The gun lapped up snow and vegetation with a blowtorch thirty feet long. The flame left a black arrow on the ground, showing the Germans exactly where the gun was hidden. The shot was a miss. (p. 34)"

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore 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. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have 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. 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 what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.""

"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."

"People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." It ends like this: "Poo-tee-weet?" (p. 22)"

"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. (pp. 21-22)"

"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. (p. 19)"

"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?""

"I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. (p. 18)"

""You were just babies then!" she said. "What?" I said. "You were just babies in the war — like the ones upstairs!" I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood. "But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation. "I — I don't know," I said. "Well I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. "I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it The Children's Crusade." She was my friend after that."

"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. (p. 11)"

""I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby," I said. "The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands of people are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad." (pp. 4-5)"

""You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?" "No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?" "I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'" What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death."

"The smell of mustard gas and roses."

"So it goes."

"This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace."

"Smiley: "I'M not Smiley, I'm a REAL cow! Moo!""

"Fone Bone: "Why is Smiley wearing a cow suit?""

""Monsters do not behave themselves - that's the whole idea!"- Rat Creature"

""STUPID, STUPID RAT-CREATURES!"- Fone Bone to the Rat Creatures"

""QUICHE"- Rat Creature"

""Never play an ace where a two will do"- Dragon"

""Surrender Small Mammal!!" - Rat Creatures"

""You know what? I've just about had it with you. First you messed with my cousin, now you're messin' with my girl! Let's go -- right now!"- Fone Bone"

""If I didn't learn it in the fourth grade, it didn't need learning."- Smiley Bone"

""Upon your feet / You have ten toes / They look just like / Po-ta-toes!" (one of Fone Bone's more atrocious lyrical attempts)"

"Phoney Bone: "My world is crumbling around me""

"But the skull was laughing again; this time making a thoughtful, almost kindly noise. "Remember what I told you about time," it said. "When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could've walked through the walls.""

"Do you like the first poem?" "It certainly had a lot of feeling," she said. "Can you really rhyme 'bloomed' and 'ruined'?" "It needs a bit of smoothing out," Prince Lír admitted, "'Miracle' is the word I'm worried about." "I was wondering about 'grackle' myself."

"I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer."

"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea."

"Cruel?" she asked. "How can I be cruel? That is for mortals." But then she did raise her eyes, and they were great with sorrow, and with something very near to mockery. She said, "So is kindness."

"I must go. There is a ogre of some sort devouring village maidens two day's ride from here. It is said that he can be slain only by one who wields the Great Ax of Duke Alban. Unfortunately, Duke Alban himself was one of the first consumed — he was dressed as a village maiden at the time, to deceive the monster — and there is little doubt who holds the Great Ax now. If I do not return, think of me. Farewell."

"The prince said, "Who is she Molly? What kind of woman is it who believes — who knows, for I saw her face — that she can cure wounds with a touch, and who weeps without tears?" Molly went on about her work, still humming to herself. "Any woman can weep without tears," she answered over her shoulder, "and most can heal with her hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that's riddle enough.""

"I like being brave well enough, but I will be a lazy coward again if you think that would be better. The sight of her makes me want to do battle with all evil and ugliness, but it also makes me want to sit still and be unhappy."

"But what's left on earth that I haven't tried?" Prince Lír demanded. "I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and some more than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the march of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry — and if you don't think that was a heroic deed, you don't know her mother. I have vanquished exactly fifteen black knights, waiting by the ford in their black pavillion, challenging all who came to cross. And I've long since lost count of the witches in the thorny woods, the giants, the demons disguised as damsels, the glass hills, the fatal riddles, and terrible tasks; the magic apples, rings, lamps, potions, swords, cloaks, boots, neckties, and nightcaps. Not to mention the winged horses, the basillisks and sea serpents, and all the rest of the livestock."

"Molly Grue gathered her courage to answer, even though she suspected that it was impossible to speak the truth to King Haggard. Something in his winter presence blighted all words, tangled meanings, and bent honest intentions into shapes as tormented as the towers of his castle."

"I will tell you a story," Schmendrick said. "As a child I was apprenticed to the mightiest magician of all, the great Nikos, whom I have spoken of before. But even Nikos, who could turn cats into cattle, snowflakes into snowdrops, and unicorns into men, could not change me into so much as a carnival cardsharp. A last he said to me, 'My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known. Unfortunately, it seems to work backwards at the moment, and even I can find no way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to find your own way to reach your power in time; but frankly, you should live so long as that will take you. Therefore I grant it that you shall not age from this day forth, but will travel the world round and round, eternally inefficient, until at last you come to yourself and know what you are. Don't thank me. I tremble at your doom."

"The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart."

"That's a good curse, that's a professional job. I always say, whatever you're having done, go to an expert. It pays in the long run."

"But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shining beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down. "I am here now," she said at last. Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is that to me that you're here now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you come to me now, when I am this?" ... The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world." "She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world that comes to Molly Grue.""

"We do lead a good life here, or if we don't, I don't know anything about it. I sometimes think that a little fear, a little hunger, might be good for us — sharpen our souls, so to speak."

"Where you are going now," Schmendrick answered, "few will mean you anything but evil, and a friendly heart — however foolish — may be as welcome as water one day. Take me with you, for laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you."

"He was not lying, merely organizing events more sensibly."

"It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is … There is much misjudgment in the world. … We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."