Sirens Of Titan Quotes

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand—passive resistance and open displays of contempt.

The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everyone. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.

Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones.

I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home.

That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.

Take care of the people, and god almighty will take care of himself.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.

It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of pain now, Unk, but you won't learn anything if you don't invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.

The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky—as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.

There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

Just 'cause something makes you feel better than anything else, that don't mean it's good for you.

All was forgiven. All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.

It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free.

He looked around at the perfectly white world, felt the wet kisses of the snowflakes, pondered hidden meanings in the pale yellow streetlights that shone in a world so whitely asleep. "Beautiful," he whispered.

The surface of Earth heaved and seethed in fecund restlessness. Earth was most fertile where the most death was.

Don't truth me, [...] and I won't truth you.

Her face ... was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme - a variation that made observers think, Yes - that would be another very nice way for people to look. What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.

Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last.

Oh Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia — what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, 'Somebody up there likes me.' And no longer can a tyrant say, 'God wants this or that to happen, and anyone who doesn't help this or that to happen is against God.' O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!" -The prayer of the Reverend C. Horner Redwine

What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She had overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.

Now, you can say your Daddy is right and the other little child's Daddy is wrong, but the universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness—that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness.

I tell you even a half-dead man hates to be alive and not be able to see any sense to it.

The only controls available to those on board were two push-buttons on the center post of the cabin -- one labeled on and one labeled off. The on button simply started a flight from Mars. The off button connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of the Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off.

Sorry," said Salo."I would say, 'Is there anything I can do?'- but Skip once told me that that was the most hateful and stupid expression in the English language.

There is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive? The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks water from the springs of the bed.

it’s a thankless job, telling people it’s a hard, hard Universe they’re in.

You asked the impossible of a machine and the machine complied.

You might just learn something when you're in a mood to learn something. The only thing I ever learned was that some people are lucky and other people aren't and not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School can say why.

Time passed quickly. Constant did not move.

The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms,

Sooner or later, Chrono believed, the magical forces of the Universe would put everything back together again. They always did.

(...) a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility.

I don't know what's going on...and I'm probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we're being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it's over.

Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines. They weren’t dependable. They weren’t efficient. They weren’t predictable. They weren’t durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore.

You are going to do this voluntarily, Mr. Constant, so that the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent can have a drama of dignified self-sacrifice to remember and ponder through all time.

Everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been.

As far as I’m concerned,” said Constant, “the Universe is a junk yard, with everything in it overpriced. I am through poking around in the junk heaps, looking for bargains. Every so-called bargain,” said Constant, “has been connected by fine wires to a dynamite bouquet.

Whenever I ask a question, and the pain comes, I know I have asked a really good question.

Now they were regaining consciousness– were being treated to a cruel and lovely illusion.

Luck is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.

Anybody who has traveled this far on a fool's errand," said Salo, "has no choice but to uphold the honor of fools by completing the errand.

Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.

I have graded my separate works from A to D. The grades I hand out to myself do not place me in literary history. I am comparing myself with myself. Thus can I give myself an A-plus for Cat’s Cradle, while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare. The report card is chronological, so you can plot my rise and fall on graph paper, if you like: Player Piano B The Sirens of Titan A Mother Night A Cat’s Cradle A-plus God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater A Slaughterhouse-Five A-plus Welcome to the Monkey House B-minus Happy Birthday, Wanda June D Breakfast of Champions C Wampeters, Foma & Grandfalloons C Slapstick D Jailbird A Palm Sunday C

His ship was powered, and the Martian war effort was powered, by a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness—that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness.

He was an anarchist, though he never got into any trouble about it, except with his wife.

The title derived from the fact that all the words between timid and Timbuktu in very small dictionaries relate to time.

For people who had nothing much to do and nowhere much to go, they were extraordinarily interested in their watches—

Low comedy, empty heroics and pointless death

He watched and recorded their subversive activites with love, amusement, and detachment.

Mr. Constant," he said, "right now you’re as easy for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to watch as a man on a street corner selling apples and pears. But just imagine how hard you would be to watch if you had a whole office building jammed to the rafters with industrial bureaucrats—men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired. A single industrial bureaucrat, if he is sufficiently vital and nervous, should be able to create a ton of meaningless papers a year for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to examine.

It was through this viewer that he got his first reply from Tralfamadore. The reply was written on Earth in huge stones on a plain in what is now England. The ruins of the reply still stand, and are known as Stonehenge. The meaning of Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above, is: "Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed.

A kind of university - only nobody goes to it. There aren’t any buildings, isn’t any faculty. Everybody’s in it and nobody’s in it. It’s like a cloud that everybody has given a little puff of mist to, and then the cloud does all the heavy thinking for everybody. I don’t mean there’s really a cloud. I just mean it’s something like that. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, Skip, there’s no sense in trying to explain it to you. All I can say is, there aren’t any meetings.

Unk had no way of judging the quality of the information contained in the letter. He accepted it all hungrily, uncritically. And, in accepting it, Unk gained an understanding of life that was identical with the writer's understanding of life. Unk wolfed down a philosophy.

Now, you can say that your Daddy is right and the other little child’s Daddy is wrong, but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

Look forward to being really in love for the first time, Bea," said Rumfoord. “Look forward to behaving aristocratically without any outward proofs of your aristocracy.Look forward to having nothing but the dignity and intelligence and tenderness that God gave you—look forward to taking those materials and nothing else, and making something exquisite with them.

My mate died today,” said Constant. “Sorry,” said Salo. “I would say, ‘Is there anything I can do?’—but Skip once told me that that was the most hateful and stupid expression in the English language.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent; Rented a tent, a tent, a tent. Rented a tent! Rented a tent! Rented a, rented a tent. —SNARE DRUM ON MARS

All persons, places, and events in this book are real. Certain speeches and thoughts are necessarily constructions by the author. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, since God Almighty protects the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine.

Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people’s blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.

Theology: (15) Somebody made everything for some reason.

The cold goblin spring of the crocuses was past. The frail and chilly fairy spring of the daffodils was past.

In the beginning, God became the Heaven and the Earth... And God said, 'Let Me be light," and He was light.

There's one consolation," said Bee. "We're all used up. We'll never be of any use to him again.

It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!

The off button was connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off.

Son--they say there isn't any royalty in this country, but do you want me to tell you how to be king of the United States of America? Just fall through the hole in a privy and come out smelling like a rose.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Maffia.

In the year Ten Million, according to Koradubian, there would be a tremendous house-cleaning. All records relating to the period between the death of Christ and the year One Million A.D. would be hauled to the dumps and burned. This would be done, said Koradubian, because museums and archives would be crowding the living right off the Earth. The million-year period to which the burned junk related would be summed up in history books in one sentence, according to Koradubian: Following the death of Jesus Christ, there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years.

In short, on the basis of horse sense and the best scientific information, there was nothing good to be said for the exploration of space. The time was long past when one nation could seem more glorious than another by hurling some heavy object into nothingness.

It was a politician’s gesture—a vulgar public gesture by a man who in private, among his own kind, would take wincing pains never to touch anyone.

There was something obscene about a billionaire’s being optimistic and aggressive and cunning.

Like the college professor he was, Kittredge groped only for big words, and, finding no apt ones, he coined a lot of untranslatable new ones.

The moral: Money, position, health, handsomeness, and talent aren’t everything.

The two chief teachings of this religion are these,” said Rumfoord: “Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God. “Why

If you don't know what a funnel is, get Mommy to show you one.

That's the worst thing you can do, Unk — remembering back," said Brackman. "That's what they put you in the hospital for in the first place — on account of you remembered too much.

Another woman told Constant what it was the crowd felt it had a right to. 'We have a right to know what's going on!' she cried.

He developed several hobbies that helped him to pass the time.

Following the death of Jesus Christ, there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years.

A bald man made an attempt on Constant's life with a hot dog. Stabbed at the window glass with it. Splayed the bun. Broke the frankfurter. Left a sickly sunburst of mustard and relish.

Earth was green and watery. The air of the Earth was good to breathe, as fattening as cream. The purity of the rains that fell on Earth could be tasted. The taste of purity was daintily tart. Earth was warm. The surface of the Earth heaved and seethed in fecund restlessness. Earth was most fertile where the most death was.

Fraugh!” cried the sleeper, as though he suddenly understood all. “Braugh!” he cried, not liking at all what he suddenly understood. “Sup-foe!” he said, saying in no uncertain terms what he was going to do about it. “Floof!” he cried.

Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about. Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. These unhappy agents found that what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions. Only inwardness remained to be explored. Only the human soul remain terra incognita. This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.

The creatures reproduce by flaking. The young, when shed by a parent, are indistinguishable from dandruff. There is only one sex. Every creature simply sheds flakes of his own kind, and his own kind is like everybody else's kind. There is no childhood as such. Flakes begin flaking three Earthling hours after they themselves have been shed. They do not reach maturity, then deteriorate and die. They reach maturity and stay in full bloom, so to speak, for as long as Mercury cares to sing. There is no way in which one creature can harm another, and no motive for one’s harming another. Hunger, envy, ambition, fear, indignation, religion, and sexual lust are irrelevant and unknown. The creatures only have one sense: touch. They have weak powers of telepathy. The messages they are capable of transmitting and receiving are almost as monotonous as the song of Mercury. They have only two possible messages. The first is an automatic response to the second, and the second is an automatic response to the first. The first is, "Here I am, here I am, here I am." The second is, "So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are.

Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant's father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" at any price. The old man had punished Mona Lisa by having her used in an advertising campaign for suppositories. It was the free-enterprise way of handling beauty that threatened to get the upper hand.

You finally fell in love, I see,” said Salo. “Only an Earthling year ago,” said Constant. “It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

I had a friend," said Malachi Constant into the microphone. "What was his name?" said Rumfoord. "Stony Stevenson," said Constant. "Just one friend?" said Rumfoord up in his treetop. "Just one," said Constant. His poor soul was flooded with pleasure as he realized that one friend was all that a man needed in order to be well-supplied with friendship.

Psychology: (103.) Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

It has been said that Aristotle was the last man to be familiar with the whole of his own culture.

The discovery of the chrono-synclastic infundibula said to mankind in effect: "What makes you think you're going anywhere?

The cold goblin spring of the crocuses was past. The frail and chilly fairy spring of the daffodils was past. The springtime for mankind had arrived, and the blooms of the lilac bowers outside Redwine's church hung flatly, heavy as Concord grapes.

Look forward to having nothing but the dignity and intelligence and tenderness that God gave you—look forward to taking those materials and nothing else, and making something exquisite with them.

He alienated his friends in the sciences by thanking them extravagantly for scientific advances he had read about in the recent newspapers and magazines, by assuring them, with a perfectly straight face, that life was getting better and better, thanks to scientific thinking.

Unk shook his head vaguely. He could think of no apt condensation of his adventures for the obviously ritual mood. Something great was plainly expected of him. He was not up to greatness. He exhaled noisily, letting the congregation know that he was sorry to fail them with his colorlessness. ‘I was a victim of a series of accidents,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘As are we all,’ he said. The cheering and dancing began again.

Unk, standing at a porthole, wept quietly. He was weeping for love, for family, for friendship, for truth, for civilization. The things he wept for were all abstractions, since his memory could furnish few faces or artifacts with which his imagination might fashion a passion play.

Earl Moncrief, the butler, built his financial, procurement, and secret service organizations with the brute power of cash and a profound understanding of clever, malicious, discontented people who lived behind servile facades.

But, well-endowed as Mrs. Rumfoord was, she still did troubled things like chaining a dog's skeleton to the wall, like having the gates of the estate bricked up, like letting the famous formal gardens turn into New England jungle. The moral: Money, position, health, handsomeness and talent aren't everything.

Sure," he said, "I can see the whole roller coaster you're on. And sure — I could give you a piece of paper that would tell you about every dip and turn, warn you about every bogeyman that was going to pop out at you in the tunnels. But that wouldn't help you any." "I don't see why not," said Beatrice. "Because you'd still have to take the roller-coaster ride," said Rumford. "I didn't design the roller coaster, I don't own it, and I don't say who rides and who doesn't. I just know what it's shaped like.

There was no question about it- the girl in the photograph was staggeringly beautiful. She was Miss Canal Zone, a runner-up in the Miss Universe Contest -- and in fact far more beautiful than the winner of the contests. Her beauty had frightened the judges.

The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitles, enigmatically, Evelyn and Her Magic Violin.

Everything that ever was always will be, and everything that ever will be always was.

Unk, you crazy son-of-a-bitch, I love you. I think you are the cat’s pajamas.

What I want you to try and find out is, is there anything special going on or is it all just as crazy as it looked to me ?

The town was Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.

The bank balance was Noel Constant’s share in the estate of his anarchist father. The estate had consisted principally of Government bonds.

The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.

She had overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness.

See you on Titan,” said the grin. And then it was gone.

You're not a bad sort, you know, " he said, "particularly when you forget who you are.

I was a victim of a series of accidents," he said. He shrugged. "As are we all," he said.

everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been

Not to be lonely, not to be scared—Boaz had decided that those were the important things in life.

A lot of things went wrong.' 'Have you ever considered the possibility that everything went absolutely right?

Indianapolis, Indiana,” said Constant, “is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for the murder of an Indian. The kind of people who’ll hang a white man for murdering an Indian—” said Constant, “that’s the kind of people for me.” Salo’s

To be punctual meant to exist as a point, meant that as well as to arrive somewhere on time. Constant existed as a point — could not imagine what it would, be like to exist in any other way.

Everything Rumfoord did he did with style, making all mankind look good. Everything Constant did he did in style—aggressively, loudly, childishly, wastefully—making himself and mankind look bad.

Because you’d still have to take the roller-coaster ride," said Rumfoord. "I didn’t design the roller coaster, I don’t own it, and I don’t say who rides and who doesn’t. I just know what it’s shaped like.

Her face, like the face of Malachi Constant, was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme—a variation that made observers think, Yes—that would be another very nice way for people to look.

The questions are important. I have thought harder about them than I have about the answers I already have. That is the first thing I know for sure: If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.

Then the soldiers relaxed in ranks, as though given the order at ease. Their obligations under this order were to relax, but to keep their feet in place, and to keep silent. The soldiers were free to think a little now, and to look around and to send messages with their eyes, if they had messages and could find receivers.

The density and permanence of the mansion were, of course, at ironic variance with the fact that the quondam master of the house, except for one hour in every fifty-nine days, was no more substantial than a moonbeam.

No, no -- no pity, please," said Rumfoord, stepping back, afraid of being touched. "It's a very good thing, really. I'll be seeing lots of new things, a lot of new creatures." He tried to smile. "One gets tired, you know, being caught up in the monotonous clockwork of the Solar System." He laughed harshly. "After all," he said, "it isn't as though I were dying or something. Everything that ever was always will be, and everything that ever will be always was." He shook his head quickly, and cast away a tear he hadn't known was on his eyelid.

CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC INFUNDIBULA—Just imagine that your Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on Earth, and he knows everything there is to find out, and he is exactly right about everything, and he can prove he is right about everything. Now imagine another little child on some nice world a million light years away, and that little child’s Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on that nice world so far away. And he is just as smart and just as right as your Daddy is. Both Daddies are smart, and both Daddies are right.    Only if they ever met each other they would get into a terrible argument, because they wouldn’t agree on anything. Now, you can say that your Daddy is right and the other little child’s Daddy is wrong, but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.    The reason both Daddies can be right and still get into terrible fights is because there are so many different ways of being right. There are places in the Universe, though, where each Daddy could finally catch on to what the other Daddy was talking about. These places are where all the different kinds of truths fit together as nicely as the parts in your Daddy’s solar watch. We call these places chrono-synclastic infundibula.    The Solar System seems to be full of chrono-synclastic infundibula. There is one great big one we are sure of that likes to stay between Earth and Mars. We know about that one because an Earth man and his Earth dog ran right into it.    You might think it would be nice to go to a chrono-synclastic infundibulum and see all the different ways to be absolutely right, but it is a very dangerous thing to do. The poor man and his poor dog are scattered far and wide, not just through space, but through time, too.    Chrono (kroh-no) means time. Synclastic (sin-class-tick) means curved toward the same side in all directions, like the skin of an orange. Infundibulum (in-fun-dib-u-lum) is what the ancient Romans like Julius Caesar and Nero called a funnel. If you don’t know what a funnel is, get Mommy to show you one.

Fern showed him an organizational plan that had the name Magnum Opus, Incorporated. It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance.

Old Noel Constant had never known anything about business, and neither had his son—and what little charm the Constants had evaporated the instant they pretended that their successes depended on their knowing their elbows from third base.

He was held together by cotter pins, hose clamps, nuts, bolts, and magnets. Salo’s tangerine-colored skin, which was so expressive when he was emotionally disturbed, could be put on or taken off like an Earthling wind-breaker. A magnetic zipper held it shut.

There was no sign in the face of any intermediate stages in the aging process, no hint of the man of thirty or forty or fifty who had been left behind. Only adolescence and the age of sixty were represented. It was as though a seventeen-year-old had been withered and bleached by a blast of heat.

What an optimistic animal man is!" said Rumfoord rosily. "Imagine expecting the species to last for ten million more years - as though people were as well-developed as turtles!" He shrugged. "Well - who knows - maybe human beings will last that long, just on the basis of pure cussedness. What's your guess?

Both the man and his mate were frequent visitors to the psychiatric wards of their respective hospitals. And it is perhaps food for thought," said Rumfoord, "that this supremely frustrated man was the only Martian to write a philosophy, and that this supremely self-frustrating woman was the only Martian to write a poem.

The righteously displeased crowds existed now in every part of the world. The total membership of the Churches of God the Utterly Indifferent was a good, round three billion. The young lions who had first taught the creed could now afford to be lambs, to contemplate such oriental mysteries as water trickling down a bell rope.

The committee had been baffled by Bee. She had no fingerprints on record. The Committee believed her to be either Florence White, a plain and friendless girl who had disappeared from a steam laundry in Cohoes, New York, or Darlene Simpkins, a plain and friendless girl who had last been seen accepting a ride with a swarthy stranger in Brownsville, Texas.

If I wasn’t a very good father or a very good anything that was because I was as good as dead for a long time before I died. Nobody loved me and I wasn’t very good at anything and I couldn’t find any hobbies I liked and I was sick and tired of selling pots and pans and watching television so I was as good as dead and I was too far gone to ever come back.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization.

This history will break the heart of every human being who has a heart that can be broken.

There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree. The

stationery of Magnum Opus,

La peggior cosa che potrebbe capitare a chiunque sarebbe di non essere usati per qualcosa da qualcuno

Ci abbiamo messo tutto questo tempo per capire che uno degli scopi della vita umana, indipendentemente da chi la controlla, è amare chi cerca di essere amato

said Rumfoord. “I dared her to invite you,

In the beginning, God became the Heaven and the Earth. … And God said, ‘Let Me be light,’ and He was light. —The Winston Niles Rumfoord Authorized Revised Bible

Thirty days have Salo, Niles, June, and September, Winston, Chrono, Kazak, and November, April, Rumfoord, Newport, and Infundibulum. All the rest, baby mine, have thirty-one. The

Malachi Constant of Hollywood, California, came out of the rhinestone phone booth cold sober. His eyes felt like cinders. His mouth tasted like horseblanket pur

I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm.

Somebody made everything for some reason.

The reason both Daddies can be right and still get into terrible fights is because there are so many different ways of being right.

Where would you rather be tomorrow — on Mars or in the Kingdom of Heaven?

He was finally understanding that every bit of it had been real! He had been calm in the midst of the mob because he knew he wasn't going to die on Earth.

He ransacked his memory like a thief going through another man's billfold.

Constant, having just heard from Rumfoord that he was to be mated to Rumfoord's wife on Mars, looked away from Rumfoord to the museum of remains along one wall.

You boys ain’t got it so bad," he said to his rigid squadmates. "You oughta see how we treat the generals, if you think you’s bad off.

The town was Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way. The walls were those of the Rumfoord estate.

Constant was a male and Mrs. Rumfoord was a female, and Constant imagined that he had the means of demonstrating, if given the opportunity, his unquestionable superiority.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. Outwardness

Whatever we've said, friends, we're saying still--such as it was, such as it is, such as it will be.

No chimpanzee husband would stand by while his wife lost all her coconuts.

Anybody who has traveled this far on a fool’s errand, " said Salo, "has no choice but to uphold the honor of fools by completing the errand.

These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaninglessness without end.

It wasn’t any ordinary guessing game,” said Rumfoord. “It was about how long the human race was going to last. I thought that might sort of give you more perspective about your own problems.” “The

... The Sirens of Titan …. … ‘That’s a funny name for a book,’ I said with a gulp. ‘Are those women going to get arrested?’ Mr Peterson didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. ‘They’re not wearing many clothes,’ I pointed out. ‘What’s your point?’ he asked. ‘So I thought maybe the sirens might be for them.’ Mr Peterson frowned. ‘ I think the police are allowed to arrest you for wearing too few clothes,’ I explained. Comprehension dawned on Mr Peterson’s face. ‘No, kid. Not sirens as in police sirens. Sirens as in Homer.’ I frowned. ‘Simpson?’ ‘The Odyssey!’ I looked at him blankly. At some point in the last thirty seconds, we’d stopped speaking the same language. Mr Peterson sighed and rubbed his wrinkled forehead. ‘The Odyssey’s a very old Greek story by a very old Greek man called Homer. And in The Odyssey there are these very beautiful women called sirens …… ‘oh’, I said. ‘So the women are the sirens? And that’s why they’re not wearing very many clothes?” ‘Right. Except in Kurt Vonnegut’s book the Sirens don’t live in the Mediterranean. They live on Titan, which is one of Saturn’s moons.’ ‘Yes, I know that,’ I said. (I didn’t want Mr Peterson to think I was an idiot). ‘It’s the second largest moon in the solar system, after Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. It’s actually larger than Mercury, though not nearly so dense.’ Mr Peter frowned again and shook his head. ‘I guess these days school puts a big emphasis on sciences instead of the arts, huh?’ ‘No, not really. School puts a big emphasis on exam questions. Do sirens breathe methane?

a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: How does he survive? The answer is: He eats dates from the calendar and drinks water from the springs of the bed.

The OFF button was connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off.

The twelve sides were said by the architect to represent the twelve great religions of the world. So far, no one had asked the architect to name them. That was lucky, because he couldn’t have done it. There

Rumfoord's palm was callused, but not horny like the palm of a man doomed to a single trade for all of his days. The calluses were perfectly even, made by the thousand happy labors of an active leisure class.

It has been said that Earthling civilization, so far, has created ten thousand wars, but only three intelligent commentaries on war—the commentaries of Thucydides, of Julius Caesar and of Winston Niles Rutherfoord.

He was wondering if there could possibly be eyes up there, eyes that could see everything he did. And if there were eyes up there, and they wanted him to do certain things, go certain places — how could they make him?

The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of the pain now, Unk, but you won’t learn anything if you don’t invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.

The shadow and flutter of Constant’s helicopter settling to the heliport seemed to many of the people below to be like the shadow and flutter of the Bright Angel of Death. It seemed that way because of the stock-market crash, because money and jobs were so scarce— And it seemed especially that way to them because the things that had crashed the hardest, that had pulled everything down with them, were the enterprises of Malachi Constant.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Maffia.” —WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD

The mysteries of the materialization, like the mysteries of a hanging, were enhanced by the wall; were made pornographic by the magic lantern slides of morbid imaginations—magic lantern slides projected by the crowd on the blank stone walls.

Rebuttal—a punctual word if there ever was one," said Rumfoord. "I say this, and then you rebut me, then I rebut you, then somebody else comes in and rebuts us both." He shuddered. "What a nightmare where everybody gets in line to rebut each other.

And to what do you attribute this wonderful luck of yours?" said Rumfoord. Constant shrugged. "Who knows?" he said. "I guess somebody up there likes me," he said. Rumfoord looked up at the ceiling. "What a charming concept—someone’s liking you up there.

The message was contained in a sealed lead wafer that was two inches square and three-eighths of an inch thick. The wafer itself was contained in a gold mesh reticule which was hung on a stainless steel band clamped to the shaft that might be called Salo’s neck.

He found, moreover, that he still knew how to take the weapon apart. That much of his memory, at any rate, had not been wiped out at the hospital. It made him furtively happy to suspect that there were probably other parts of his memory that had been missed as well.

Indianapolis, Indiana,” said Constant, “is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for the murder of an Indian. The kind of people who’ll hang a white man for murdering an Indian—” said Constant, “that’s the kind of people for me.” Salo

But just imagine how hard you would be to watch if you had a whole office building jammed to the rafters with industrial bureaucrats—men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired. A single industrial bureaucrat, if he is sufficiently vital and nervous, should be able to create a ton of meaningless papers a year for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to examine.

In the year Ten Million, according to Koradubian, there would be a tremendous house-cleaning. All records relating to the period between the death of Christ and the year One Million A.D. would be hauled to dumps and burned. This would be done, said Koradubian, because museums and archives would be crowding the living right off the earth.

You go up to a man, and you say, ’How are things going, Joe?’ And he says, ’Oh, fine, fine—couldn’t be better.’ And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.

What’s that there Slivovitz like?” Helmholtz asked the bartender, squinting at a dusty bottle on the bottom row. He had just finished a sloe gin rickey. “I didn’t even know we had it,” said the bartender. He put the bottle on the bar, tilting it away from himself so he could read the label. “Prune brandy,” he said. “Believe I’ll try that next,” said Helmholtz.

Look," said Rumfoord, "life for a punctual person is like a roller coaster." He turned to shiver his hands in her face. "All kinds of things are going to happen to you! Sure," he said, "I can see the whole roller coaster you’re on. And sure—I could give you a piece of paper that would tell you about every dip and turn, warn you about every bogeyman that was going to pop out at you in the tunnels. But that wouldn’t help you any.

Sirens blasted, breaking the silence and spinning me around. The shrill sound was all too familiar, and I snapped into action. Vicious excitement replaced the restlessness, and I knew just how screwed up that was, but right then? Oh yeah, I could use a fight. Yesterday in the quad had been child’s play. Grabbing the Glock loaded with titanium bullets, I hooked it into the holster and fit it around my thigh. I snatched the daggers off the dresser and headed out the door, not even bothering with grabbing a shirt. I came to a complete stop as Josie’s door swung open. What in the holy fuck were Alex and Josie doing together? For just a few seconds, the three of us were literally frozen, staring at each other as the sirens blared overhead. And then Alex broke the silence. “Really?” she said dryly, eyeing me with a smirk. “You’re going to fight with the awesomeness of your six-pack as a weapon?” I arched a brow. “Yeah, you know, I was going to test out the whole abs of steel theory thing. The gun attached to my thigh and the daggers in my hands are just props. Mainly for show. Don’t want to take away from the gloriousness that is my body, though.” Her smirk flipped into a grin. “Whatever.” She started forward. Up ahead, a tall figure stepped out in the hall, and light glinted off the titanium daggers in his hands. Aiden. Of course their room had to be close to mine. Of. Course.

He laid the message he had been carrying so long on Rumfoord’s empty, lavender contour chair. “There it is — friend,” he said to his memory of Rumfoord, “and much consolation may it give you, Skip. Much pain it cost your old friend Salo. In order to give it to you — even too late — your old friend Salo had to make war against the core of his being, against the very nature of being a machine. “You asked the impossible of a machine,” said Salo, “and the machine complied. “The machine is no longer a machine,” said Salo. “The machine’s contacts are corroded, his bearings fouled, his circuits shorted, and his gears stripped. His mind buzzes and pops like the mind of an Earthling — fizzes and overheats with thoughts of love, honor, dignity, rights, accomplishment, integrity, independence —” Old Salo picked up the message again from Rumfoord’s contour chair. It was written on a thin square of aluminum. The message was a single dot.

Every nation on Earth was attacked. Earth’s casualties were 461 killed, 223 wounded, none captured, and 216 missing. Mars’ casualties were 149,315 killed, 446 wounded, 11 captured, and 46,634 missing. At the end of the war, every Martian had been killed, wounded, captured, or been found missing. Not a soul was left on Mars. Not a building was left standing on Mars. The last waves of Martians to attack Earth were,-to the horror of the Earthlings who pot-shotted them, old men, women, and a few little children. The

Salo had a skin with the texture and color of the skin of an Earthling tangerine. Salo had three light deer-like legs. His feet were of an extraordinarily interesting design, each being an inflatable sphere. By inflating these spheres to the size of German batballs, Salo could walk on water. By reducing them to the size of golf balls, Salo could bound over hard surfaces at high speeds. When he deflated the spheres entirely, his feet became suction cups. Salo could walk up walls. Salo had no arms. Salo had three eyes, and his eyes could perceive not only the so-called visible spectrum, but infrared and ultraviolet and X-rays as well. Salo was punctual—that is, he lived one moment at a time—and he liked to tell Rumfoord that he would rather see the wonderful colors at the far ends of the spectrum than either the past or the future. This was something of a weasel, since Salo had seen, living a moment at a time, far more of the past and far more of the Universe than Rumfoord had. He remembered more of what he had seen, too. Salo’s head was round and hung on gimbals.

industrial bureaucrats—men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired.

Mr. Constant,” he said, “right now you’re as easy for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to watch as a man on a street corner selling apples and pears. But just imagine how hard you would be to watch if you had a whole office building jammed to the rafters with industrial bureaucrats—men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired. A single industrial bureaucrat, if he is sufficiently vital and nervous, should be able to create a ton of meaningless papers a year for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to examine. In the Magnum Opus Building, we will have thousands of them! And you and I can have the top two stories, and you can go on keeping track of what’s really going on the way you do now.

I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I’m doing good, and them I’m doing good for know I’m doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home. "And when I die down here some day," said Boaz, "I’m going to be able to say to myself, ’Boaz—you made millions of lives worth living. Ain’t nobody ever spread more joy. You ain’t got an enemy in the Universe.’ " Boaz became for himself the affectionate Mama and Papa he’d never had. " ’You go to sleep now,’ " he said to himself, imagining himself on a stone deathbed in the caves. " ’You’re a good boy, Boaz,’ " he said. " ’Good night.

BbJust imagine that your Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on Earth, and he knows everything there is to find out, and he is exactly right about everything, and he can prove he is right about everything. Now imagine another little child on some nice world a million light years away, and that little child’s Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on that nice world so far away. And he is just as smart and just as right as your Daddy is. Both Daddies are smart, and both Daddies are right. Only if they ever met each other they would get into a terrible argument, because they wouldn’t agree on anything. Now, you can say that your Daddy is right and the other little child’s Daddy is wrong, but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree. The reason both Daddies can be right and still get into terrible fights is because there are so many different ways of being right. There are places in the Universe, though, where each Daddy could finally catch on to what the other Daddy was talking about. These places are where all the different kinds of truths fit together as nicely as the parts in your Daddy’s solar watch. We call these places chronosynclastic infundibula.

I fell deeply in love with the books of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. They parented me, and gave me a sense of what it was to be a decent person, without any of the usual hypocritical rhetoric. They fired my imagination and opened me up; I read them all one after the other, Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse-Five, on and on they go, they gave me the soul nutrients I needed. He was bitterly funny and awakened in me a morality that lay dormant and unarticulated. He taught me that it was fun and beautiful to be humble, and that human beings are no more important than rutabagas. That we’ve got to love with all we are, not for some reward down the line, but purely for the sake of being a loving person, and that creativity was the highest part of ourselves to engage. He pointed out the frivolous and insensitive attitudes that birthed the absurd cruelty of war. His humorous detachment from the world’s insane and egotistical violence—“So it goes”—my first hint of a spiritual concept. To this day, his books inform my political and social views, my sense of humor, and touch me deeply. KVJ changed my life, he never gets old.