On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin - who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.

I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. But they are murdered children all the same.

Most things in this world don´t work, aspirin do.

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.

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

The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?" It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: "Nothing.

They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.