“There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

“When a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.”

“Mr. Galliano wore his big top-hat very much on one side of his head, so much so that Jimmy really wondered why it didn't fall off.‘When Galliano wears his hat on one side the circus is taking lots of money,’ said Lotta to him. ‘But when you see him wearing it straight up, then you know things are going badly. He gets into a bad temper then, and I hide under the caravan when I see him coming. I've never seen his hat so much on one side before!’Jimmy thought that circus ways were very extraordinary. Even hats seemed to share in the excitement!”

“Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring.”

“A man never describes his own character so clearly as when he describes another.”