Slaughterhouse-Five Quotes
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All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names.
Context
You're looking at the opening line of the novel, and Vonnegut is alluding to the non-fiction basis of his book.
Like Billy, he was a soldier in World War II, so many of these events are taken from real life experiences. Of course, it may be a little misleading—because what happens to Billy is a bit more than a hop, skip, and a jump from realistic.
Where you've heard it
In a way, this quote does what the novel as a whole does: it blurs the lines between reality and fiction. (We see something similar in The Things They Carried.) So if you're ever telling a mostly true story, you can break this one out: "All this happened, more or less."
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
If your life starts to sound like a Trout novel, maybe you should be a little worried about your own sanity.