"It’s all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan."
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
"Her breasts were like pomegranates or what you will, but like nothing so much as a young woman’s breasts."
Through the eyes of a narrator whose named is used exactly once and is ostensibly writing a book about the Hiroshima bombing, we go on a whirlwind, slapstick-ish escapade through religion, science, colonialism, the military-industrial complex, and beyond.
"Science is magic that works."
"For instance, do you know the story about Father on the day they first tested a bomb out at Alamogordo? After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, ‘Science has now known sin.’ And do you know what Father said? He said, ‘What is sin?’"
Somewhat predictably, the plot can be difficult to follow at times, but the novelist's trademark humor -- most of it built directly into the dialogue -- aptly bridges the gaps. "Cat's Cradle" is both prescient and ridiculous, making it the ideal book to greet an impending end of the world.
"When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed."
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