She broke my heart. I didn't like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for.

The city was blacked out because bombers might come, so Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city can do when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

God Almighty Himself must have been hilarious when human beings so mingled iron and water and fire as to make a railroad train!

The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage - and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still - I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art.

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.

The little girls were wearing black party dresses and black party shoes, so strangers would know at once how nice they were.