Slaughterhouse-Five Quotes

“So it goes.”

“The smell of mustard gas and roses.”

“If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob! (p. 67)”

“Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”

“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt. (p. 122)”

“How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. (p. 105)”

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. (p. 39)”

“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. (p. 18)”

“My father died many years ago now—of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust. (p. 210)”

“The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought. (p. 11)”

“"Poo-tee-weet?" (p. 215; closing words)
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“The British had no way of knowing it, but the candles and the soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the State. (p. 96)”

“"Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut," murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest. "Go take a flying fuck at the moon." (p. 147) " He looked down at his bare feet, they were ivory and blue" pg 72”

“This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace.”

“'''All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply ''is.''''' Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. (p. 86)”

“She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all. (p. 102)”

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes. (pp. 21-22)”

“An American near Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains. Moments later he said, 'There they go, there they go.' He meant his brains.
That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book. (p. 125)”

“"Did that really happen?" said Maggie White. She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away. She hadn't had even one baby yet. She used birth control. (p. 171)”

“Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. (p. 167)”