First Vonnegut book I ever read. Made me want to laugh and cry so much.
highlights
I get drunk, and I drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then, speaking gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to connect me with this friend or that one, from whom I have not heard in years. Page 5
I can’t get over the phrase speaking gravely and elegantly into the telephone.
One end of the wallpaper was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there was all that middle part, which was the middle. Page 6
And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. Page 23
Sob.
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. Page 24
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still — if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice. Page 269