So It Goes - Kurt Vonnegut Quote

'So it goes" is a quote from one of my favourite books, Slaughter House Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. A dark and satirical time travel novel based around the adventures of Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist from upstate New York who becomes unstuck in time and the horrific Dresden fire bombings in the second world war.

'So it goes' is an expression used by the Tralfamadorians, an alien race who see all of time at once, and look like oranges with a plungers for feet and a single eye on a stalk over it's body. Billy comes into contact with this bizarre species, when they abduct him along with a Hollywood actress for their people zoo back on Tralfamadore. 'So it goes' is a short refrain that immediately follows every death in the book, and is meant as a memento mori, as comic relief, and to explain the unexplained.

Slaughter House Five is exactly as brilliant and absurd as it sounds.