So it goes…

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. 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. – “Slaughterhouse Five”

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5 Responses to So it goes…

  1. shelley ju says:

    Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut.

  2. jayne d'Arcy says:

    aw man, I’m so sorry to hear that he is gone. Slaughterhouse Five was one of favorite books due to the Tralfamadorians view on time.

  3. Tim Wilson says:

    I love the “for instance” in this quotation, since “instance” and “instants” are (almost) homophones.

    Content, allusion, wordplay: Thanks Mr. Vonnegut.

  4. Karan says:

    We had the same conversation here at the Flummel house.

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