Thomas Pynchon Quotes - Page 2

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• There is nothing so loathsome as a sentimental surrealist.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Sentimental, Surrealist

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.541, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

• Length is usually intensity.
  Not time.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Intensity, Length

  12 Copy quote

• Losing faith is a complicated business and takes time. There are no epiphanies, no "moments of truth." It takes much thought and concentration in the later phases, which thenselves come about through an accumulation of small accidents: examples of general injustice, misfortune falling upon the godly, prayers of one's own unanswered.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Prayer, Fall, Godly

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.219, Penguin

  12 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.

  30 Copy quote

• A screaming comes across the sky.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Sky

  Gravity's Rainbow episode 1 (1973)

  26 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

  26 Copy quote

• this is america, you live in it, you let it happen. let it unfurl.

  Thomas Pynchon

  America, Happens

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “The Crying of Lot 49”, p.76, Penguin

  11 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

• The Lord's angel, Gebrail, dictated the Koran to Mohammed the Lord's Prophet. What a joke if all that holy book were only twenty-three years of listening to the desert. A desert which has no voice.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Book, Angel, Years

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.52, Penguin

  25 Copy quote

• If patterns of ones and zeros were 'like' patterns of human lives and death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?

  Thomas Pynchon

  Life, Death, Science

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Vineland”, p.63, Penguin

  19 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

• Teamwork," Koteks snarled, "is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It's a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Teamwork, Responsibility, Way

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “The Crying of Lot 49”, p.40, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• Someday it'll all be done by machine. Information machines.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Machines, Done, Information

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.203, Penguin

  20 Copy quote

• There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Differences, Chance, Behavior

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.253, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

• It takes, unhappily, no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a confessional.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Writing, Rooms, Desks

  "V". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1963.

  13 Copy quote

• What’s this? What are the antagonists doing here – infiltrating their own audience? Well, they’re not really. It’s somebody else’s audience at the moment, and these nightly spectacles are an appreciable part of the darkside hours of life of the rocket capital. The chances for any paradox here, really, are less than you think.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Thinking, Rockets, Chance

  19 Copy quote

• Not me, paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen, right, you can never have too much.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Kitchen, Too Much, Garlic

  Thomas Pynchon (2013). “Bleeding Edge: A Novel”, p.18, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

• My belief is that "recluse" is a code word generated by journalists... meaning, "doesn't like to talk to reporters."

  Thomas Pynchon

  Belief, Recluse, Journalist

  Phone call to CNN, June 5, 1997.

  8 Copy quote

• Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Government, Curiosity, Desire

  "Mason & Dixon". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1997.

  18 Copy quote

• Oh, this beer here is cold, cold and hop-bitter, no point coming up for air, gulp, till it's all--hahhhh.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Funny, Beer, Air

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “Gravity's Rainbow”, p.240, Penguin

  17 Copy quote

• What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Men, People, Evil

  Thomas Pynchon (2015). “Inherent Vice”, p.349, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn't felt it go away, as if he'd known the best moment to let go.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Letting Go, Hands, Going Away

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “The Crying of Lot 49”, p.64, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Believe, Eye, Pyramids

  19 Copy quote

• Darkness invades the dreams of the glassblower. Of all the unpleasantries his dreams grab in out of the night air, an extinguished light is the worst. Light in his dreams, was always hope: the basic, moral hope. As the contacts break helically away, hope turns to darkness, and the glassblower wakes sharply tonight crying, "Who? Who?"

  Thomas Pynchon

  Dream, Night, Light

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

  7 Copy quote

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