Billy Pilgrim > Billy Pilgrim's Quotes

“Un luogo incantevole. Panorami ridenti. Andiamocene.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“And so it goes...”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“All this happened, more or less.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,” murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest. “Go take a flying fuck at the moon”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Poo-tee-weet?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Vladimir: I don't understand.
Estragon: Use your intelligence, can't you?
Vladimir uses his intelligence.
Vladimir: (finally) I remain in the dark.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“There's no lack of void.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Estragon: Suppose we repented.

Vladimir: Repented what?

Estragon: Oh...(He reflects.) We wouldn’t have
to go into the details.

Vladimir: Our being born?”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“ESTRAGONE: Che albero è?
VLADIMIRO: Un salice, direi.
ESTRAGONE: E le foglie dove sono?
VLADIMIRO: Dev'essere morto.
ESTRAGONE: Finito di piangere.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Ho trascinato la mia sporca vita attraverso il deserto! E tu vorresti che ci vedessi delle sfumature!”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“. . . yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“Questions arose. Like, what in the fuck was going on here, basically.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“It had been dark at the beach for hours, he hadn't been smoking much and it wasn't headlights – but before she turned away, he could swear he saw light falling on her face, the orange light just after sunset that catches a face turned to the west, watching the ocean for someone to come in on the last wave of the day, in to shore and safety.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“Sometimes in the shadows the view would light up, usually when he was smoking weed, as if the contrast knob of Creation had been messed with just enough to give everything an underglow, a luminous edge, and promise that the night was about to turn epic somehow.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“Not the first time Doc had run into girl-of-his-dreams unavailability.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“Does it ever end, he wondered. Of course it does. It did.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“I hope that death contains
less than this.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Trapped

don't undress my love
you might find a mannequin:
don't undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
she's long ago
forgotten me.
she's trying on a new
hat
and looks more the
coquette
than ever.

she is a
child
and a mannequin
and death.
I can't hate
that.
she didn't do
anything
unusual.
I only wanted her
to.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell