“For me, beauty is always retreating from one’s grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed.”

“It was too late to retreat - the world exists only because it is always too late to retreat.”

“Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.”

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

“I have lived so long within the circle of this book and with these characters that often it seems to me that the real world does not exist but that only these characters exist, and however pretentious that remark sounds... it is an absolute fact-- so much so that their glees and woes are just exactly as important to me as what happens in life.”

“I considered the case and realized that if something can exist in opinion without existing in reality, or exist in reality without existing in opinion, the conclusion is that of the two parallel lives, only opinion is necessary – not reality, which is only a secondary consideration.”