Thomas Pynchon Quotes

Quotes about:

• If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Truth, War, Asking Questions

  Gravity's Rainbow episode 28 (1973)

  103 Copy quote

• There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Real, Decision, Lines

  "Gravity's Rainbow". Book by Thomas Pynchon, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2012.

  62 Copy quote

• Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Remember, Ifs

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Against the Day”, p.211, Penguin

  45 Copy quote

• Why should things be easy to understand?

  Thomas Pynchon

  Easy, Should

  "Who Is Thomas Pynchon... And Why Did He Take Off With My Wife?". Playboy, March 1977.

  43 Copy quote

• You go from dream to dream inside me. You have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you’ve found life. I’m no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are ‘yours’ and which are ‘mine.’ It’s past sorting out.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Dream, Past, Sorting Out

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.140, Penguin

  43 Copy quote

• The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Thinking, Two, Long

  FaceBook post by Thomas Pynchon from Mar 09, 2015

  9 Copy quote

• Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Love You, Mouths, Care

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.243, Penguin

  23 Copy quote

• Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.

  Thomas Pynchon

  World, Wavelength, Weirdo

  40 Copy quote

• All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Animal, Men, Broken

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.181, Penguin

  45 Copy quote

• Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Men, Lessons, Lifetime

  FaceBook post by Thomas Pynchon from Jun 07, 2016

  14 Copy quote

• Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Writing, Ignorance, Thinking

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Slow Learner”, p.11, Penguin

  30 Copy quote

• Can't say it often enough — change your hair, change your life.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Hair, Changing Your Life, Enough

  "Inherent Vice". Book by Thomas Pynchon, August 04, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• Let the peace of this day be here tomorrow when I wake up.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Peace, Wake Up, Tomorrow

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.430, Penguin

  28 Copy quote

• She may know a little, may think of herself, face and body, as ‘pretty’…but he could never tell her all the rest, how many other living things, birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments of simple peace, also gather in what she is to him.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Love, Romantic, Rain

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.489, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Law, Murphy, Brash

  "Gravity's Rainbow". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1973.

  40 Copy quote

• There are stories, like maps that agree... too consistent among too many languages and histories to be only wishful thinking.... It is always a hidden place, the way into it is not obvious, the geography is as much spiritual as physical. If you should happen upon it, your strongest certainty is not that you have discovered it but returned to it. In a single great episode of light, you remember everything.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Spiritual, Thinking, Remembers Everything

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Against the Day”, p.193, Penguin

  34 Copy quote

• Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Dream, Essence, Idle

  16 Copy quote

• To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Moving, Humanity, Firsts

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.214, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Greed, Abuse, Power Of Love

  8 Copy quote

• You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.

  Thomas Pynchon

  May, Masters, Creatures

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.187, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• A screaming comes across the sky.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Sky

  Gravity's Rainbow episode 1 (1973)

  26 Copy quote

• The Saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor than was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe or outside, lost.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Lying, Tunnels, Light

  32 Copy quote

• I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy." Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Poison, Littles, Fantasy

  "The Crying of Lot 49". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1966.

  29 Copy quote

• It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Character, Trying, Events

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Slow Learner”, p.9, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

• So the city became the material expression of a particular loss of innocence – not sexual or political innocence but somehow a shared dream of what a city might at its best prove to be – its inhabitants became, and have remained, an embittered and amnesiac race, wounded but unable to connect through memory to the moment of injury, unable to summon the face of their violator.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Dream, Memories, Loss

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Against the Day”, p.179, Penguin

  25 Copy quote

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