Slaughterhouse-Five

"He had come to see that there is no free will."

"Why me? Why anything?"

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

"This is a pretty good universe. We have a lot to be grateful for."

"You know what I say to people when I hear they're getting married? I say 'Congratulations on the success of your agony.'"

"On Tralfamadore, they are 'two people paying attention to each other now, enjoying the present moment.'"

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die."

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

"Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything."

"Everything is meaningless, and therefore nothing matters"

"I would have liked to be born a Tralfamadorian"

"That is so human, to think you can change things"

"I have come here to tell you about the wonderful plans"

"Everything that happens is supposed to happen"

"How nice – to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive"

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die"

"Billy said, 'I want you to know that I'm doing it, the last one, now.'"

"Billy said, 'I am a very happy man, and I'm perfectly content where I am now.'"

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

"All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist."

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die."

"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."

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die."

"When we die, we only appear to die. We are all still alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at our funerals."

"I have this disease late in life. It's as if I have forgiven life for all its ills."

"Why me? That is a very Earthling question to ask, says the Tralfamadorian. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything?"

"Nothing ever goes away. We are always alive somewhere."

"The universe is deterministic and complete."

"I urge you to pay no attention to it."

"It was inevitable. It had to be this way."