“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”

“I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”

“And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?”

“If it weren't for the people, the god-damn people' said Finnerty, 'always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren't for them, the world would be an engineer's paradise.”

“It is so short and jumbled and jangled because there is nothing intelligent to say after a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead...everything is supposed to be very quiet...and it always is, except for the birds.”

“Yes, and Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United Staes of America, too. We argued that it was a good scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves-- and yet it described no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.”

“Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”