Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so.

[People] want to feel superior, so they imagine we're Bible thumpers and uneducated and all that.

Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale’s department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

We were all gun nuts and they were called varmints, crows were, because they ate grain and so did we.