“Your parents were fighting machines and self-pitying machines. Your mother was programmed to bawl out your father for being a defective moneymaking machine, and your father was programmed to bawl out your mother for being a defective housekeeping machine. They were programmed to bawl each other out for being defective loving machines. Then your father was programmed to stomp out of the house and slam the door. This automatically turned your mother into a weeping machine. And your father would go down to the tavern where he would get drunk with some other drinking machines. Then all the drinking machines would go to a whorehouse and rent fucking machines. And then your father would drag himself home to become an apologizing machine. And your mother would become a very slow forgiving machine.”

“She was a defective child-bearing machine. She destroyed herself automatically while giving birth to Dwayne. The printer disappeared. He was a disappearing machine.”

“She was a defective child-bearing machine. She destroyed herself automatically while giving birth to Dwayne.”

“Lionel Merble was a machine. Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and plant in the Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines.”

“So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”

“Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines.”

“His situation, insofar as he was a machine, was complex, tragic, and laughable. But the sacred part of him, his awareness, remained an unwavering band of light.And this book is being written by a meat machine in cooperation with a machine made of metal and plastic. The plastic, incidentally, is a close relative of the gunk in Sugar Creek. And at the core of the writing meat machine is something sacred, which is an unwavering band of light.At the core of each person who reads this book is a band of unwavering light.My doorbell has just rung in my New York apartment. And I know what I will find when I open my front door: an unwavering band of light.”