We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments—like

dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes.

“People would be surprised if they knew how much in this world was due to prayers.”

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

What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”

don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes—“with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other,” says Billy Pilgrim.

“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

She didn’t want her babies or anybody else’s babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.

And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them. And they’ll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”