“No one looks at the mountains. But they were there, making them all look silly.”

“Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.”

“The guide invited the crowd to imagine that they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear. They could look at a peak or a bird or a cloud, at a stone right in front of them, or even down into a canyon behind them. But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in a steel sphere which he could never take off. There was only one eyehole through which he could look, and welded to that eyehole were six feet of pipe.”

“The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. 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.”

“Human tendency is to make mountains out of molehills. Yet when we examine our problems...we realize it's how we look at them...that really makes the difference.”

“The devil takes us to the top of an exceeding high mountain and makes us dizzy; but God lets us look at the mountain.”