“Trout trudged onward, a stranger in a strange land. His pilgrimage was rewarded with new wisdom, which would never have been his had he remained in his basement in Cohoes. He learned the answer to a question many human beings were asking themselves so frantically: "What's blocking the traffic on the westbound barrel of the Midland City stretch of the Interstate?”

“He wanted to talk to them, if he could, to discover whether they had truths about life which he had never heard before. Here is what he hoped new truths might do for him: enable him to laugh at his troubles, to go on living, and to keep out of the North Wing of the Midland County General Hospital, which was for lunatics.”

“There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it:What is the purpose of life?Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with:To bethe eyesand earsand conscienceof the Creator of the Universe,you fool.”

“What are you?' Trout asked the boy scornfully. 'Some kind of gutless wonder?' This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robotwho had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what madethe story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespreaduse of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had noconscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening tothe people on the ground. Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on,and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline onpeople. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he waswelcomed to the human race.”

“Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.”

“Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.”

“Trout did another thing which some people might have considered eccentric: he called mirrors leaks. It amused him to pretend that mirrors were holes between two universes.If he saw a child near a mirror, he might wag his finger at a child warningly, and say with great solemnity, "Don't get too near that leak. You wouldent want to wind up in the other universe, would you?"Sometimes somebody would say in his presence, "Excuse me, I have to take a leak." This was a way of saying that the speaker intended to drain liquid wastes from his body through a valve in his lower abdomen.And trout would reply waggishly, "where I come from, that means you're about to steal a mirror."And so on”