Prologue: Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut
“…When I was a boy…all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. The have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So, [until very recently… not eons ago as is often quoted from other sources] we still had among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.
So, I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. All music is….”
[ ] is added….not part of original text….
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