Vonnegut has a lovely turn of phrase - a pessimistic irony toward wisdom and life that is somehow heartfelt and optimistic toward the best aspects of humanity. Like much of Vonnegut's work, at the heart of the Cat's Cradle storyline is that curiosity of how gentle curiosity could have fathered the atom bomb. The protagonist aligns himself with the religion of Bokononism, its folk songs and concepts interspersed throughout the text. Here are things that made me smile:
As Bokonon says: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
Hazel's obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows - and any nation, anytime anywhere.
...and then I told him, "I envy you."
"I always knew," he sighed, "that, if I waited long enough, somebody would come and envy me. I kept telling myself to be patient, that, sooner or later, somebody envious would come along."
"Are you an American?"
"That happiness is mine."
"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."
"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."
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