“How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”

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

“Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.”

“The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.”

“What passes for culture in my head is really a bunch of commercials.”

“Writing was a spiritual exercise for my father, the only thing he really believed in.”

“I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”