Billy Pilgrim Quotes

• 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.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Nice, Grateful, Forever

  Kurt Vonnegut (1969). “Slaughterhouse-five, Or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-dance with Death”, Random House LLC

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• Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Past, Slaughterhouse Five, Slaughterhouse 5

  Harold Bloom, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (2009). “Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five”, p.14, Infobase Publishing

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• Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Prayer, Wall, Past

  KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

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• On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin - who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Jesus, Mind, Taught

  KURT VONNEGUT JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE”

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• Listen:
  Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Book, Slaughterhouse Five, Slaughterhouse 5

  Slaughterhouse-Five ch. 2 (1969)

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• Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians 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.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Baby, Stars, Two

  Kurt Vonnegut (1969). “Slaughterhouse-five: or, The children's crusade, a duty-dance with death”

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• Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries.
  Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, but more an I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares sentimentalism that passed for meaning, and they usually stopped keeping a diary by the time they hit thirty, because by then they didn't want to ponder the meaning of life anymore because it scared the crap out of them.

  Dean Koontz

  Journey, Men, Thinking

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• The first time I toured the U.K. was in the early '90s with Billy Pilgrim, so I know how much the people there love music.

  Kristian Bush

  People, Firsts, Music Love

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