Quote 10
[Billy] was under doctor's orders to take a nap every day. The doctor hoped that this would relieve a complaint that Billy had: Every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody had ever caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Billy did, and not very moist. (3.15.1)
The reason for Billy's weeping may not be apparent to the doctor, but is it apparent to us? Beyond Billy's war experiences, what else might he have to cry about?
Quote 11
And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car. Nearly everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away. (4.9.16)
An "acrimonious madrigal" in this context is a loud, furious, multipart harmony of people yelling at Billy. No one in the POW train car wants to sleep next to Billy because he whimpers and kicks so badly in his sleep. Why does no one ever show any sympathy for Billy's suffering? How do you respond to Billy's extreme portrayal as helpless and childlike? How might this portrayal fit into other themes such as fate and free will or men and masculinity?
Quote 12
I happened to tell a University of Chicago professor at a cocktail party about the raid as I had seen it, about the book I would write. He was a member of a thing called The Committee on Social Thought. And he told me about the concentration camps, and about how the Germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews and so on.
All I could say was, "I know, I know. I know." (1.6.2-3)
We can imagine someone justifying the firestorm of Dresden by saying, look, it's quid pro quo: the Germans were exterminating people, and the war had to be stopped as quickly as possible. But Vonnegut witnessed the deaths of thousands of noncombatants. He wants to find a way to talk about that experience, even though he knows that, as a country, Germany did terrible things during the war.
So he raises the issue of concentration camps to say that, yes, he knows—but still, aside from larger questions of morality, he saw the boiled bodies of schoolgirls. What could make that right or correct?