Saved by Chad Aaron Hall and
Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
Every other big city in Germany had been bombed and burned ferociously. Dresden had not suffered so much as a cracked windowpane. Sirens went off every day, screamed like hell, and people went down into cellars and listened to radios there. The planes were always bound for someplace else—Leipzig, Chemnitz, Plauen, places like that. So it goes. Stea
... See moreKurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
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.
Kurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
There is an eminently useful thought experiment with which I suspect you are familiar. It goes something like, “What would an alien think of ____?” The blank is typically filled in with something like sex, or our destructive relationship to the natural world, or money. War is sometimes used to fill that blank, too. The point of the thought experime... See more
Kurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking him for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes. So they were trying to re-invent themselves
... See moreKurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
“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.” Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it. “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the... See more
Kurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inwar
... See moreKurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
And on and on it went—that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes.
Kurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
With the help of fear and echoes and winter silences, that dog had a voice like a big bronze gong.
Kurt Vonnegut • Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction. The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that whi
... See more