” (…) Why anything? Because the 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.”
—-
On the eight day, the forty-year-old hobo said to Billy, „This ain’t bad. I can be comfortable anywhere.”
„You can?” said Billy.
On the ninth day, the hobo died. So it goes. His last words were, „You think this is bad? This ain’t bad.”
—-
The American was astonished. He stood up shakily, spitting blood. He’d had two teeth knocked out. He had meant no harm by what he’d said, evidently, had no idea that the guard would hear and understand.
„Why me?” he asked the guard.
The guard shoved him back into ranks. „Vy you? Vy anybody?” he said.
—-
„You sound to me as though you don’t believe in free will,” said Billy Pilgrim.
„If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, „I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‚free will’. I have visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on earth is there any talk of free will.”
—-
It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
—-
Rumfoord was thinking in the military manner: that an inconvenient person, one whose death he wished for very much, for practical reasons, was suffering from a repulsive disease.
—-
Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of the device they wanted built by sunrise next morning. It was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser.
Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it.
So it goes.
