The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author.

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

Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

In the middle of Siberia I guess there's a lake that big [ like the Great Lakes], but there are practically no other lakes that big with fresh water.