Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

For those of who who have read this and understand the magic of Bokononism... you can find all of the quotes and Calypsos related to the text here. There was just to much to include in this post. What follows are simple quotes related to the actual novel.

• “If I actually supervised Felix, “ he said, “then I’m ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the ties, and the motions of birds and lemmings. The man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control.”

• The whore, who said her name was Sandra, offered me delights unobtainable outside of Place and Pigalle and Port Said. I said I wasn’t interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn’t really interested either As things turned out, we both had overestimated our apathies, but not by much.

• She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind. The Fat woman’s expression implied that she would go crazy on the spot if anybody did any more thinking.

• “I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person.”

• Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
  

• But all I could say as a Christian then was, “Life is sure funny sometimes”. “And sometimes it isn’t,” said Marvin Breed.

• “Americans,” he said, quoting his wife’s letter to the Times, “are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.”

• He was enchanted by the mystery of coming ashore naked on an unfamiliar island. He resolved to let the adventure run its full course, resolved to see just how far a man might go, emerging naked from salt water. It was a rebirth for him

• “She broke my heart. I didn’t like that much. But that was the price. In this world you get what you paid for.”

• “Jesus Christ?” “Oh,” said Castle. “Him” He shrugged. “People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they’ll have goo voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.”

• “What is sacred to Bokononists?” I asked after awhile. (…) “Just one thing.” I made some guesses. “The ocean? The sun?” “Man,” said Frank. “That’s all. Just man.”

• Science is magic that works.

• God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.

• “I turned to Castle the elder. “Sir, how does a man die when he’s deprived of the consolations of literature?” “In one of two ways,” he said, “putrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system.” “Neither one very pleasant, I expect,” I suggested. “No,” said Castle the elder. “For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!”

• “It felt so funny to me, like nothing else I’d ever touched,” and Newt, investigating his old fondness for the reticule. “I wonder whatever happened to it.” “I wonder what happened to a lot of things, “ said Angela. The question echoed back through time—woeful, lost.

• “Think of what paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.”