Quotessence
Home / Authors / Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPynchonWarDreamMomentsThomas PynchonMenWorldLittlesChance

Famous Thomas Pynchon Quotes

“A number of frail girls... prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.”

WorldKindEarthGirlRoomsNumbersBuildingCreaturesWindowWaveSeekingForestsShipsPrisonerVoidTowersFrailTapestrySlitsFill The Void
Book:The Crying of Lot 49
Create image

“It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home -- only the millions of last moments . . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”

EndsMomentsHomeLastsMillionsAtheismCreationBrokenMessagesNotionAtheistKingdomsFallenSomedayLive BySparksGatheringFragmentsVesselMessengersArriving
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Create image

“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.”

LightLyingLostWaterSpecialProtectSafeBreathsAncientSaintMetaphorOrganizedDreamerSpheresJoyfulRecallsThreateningLampsRelevancePulseThrustTunnelsParanoidPunLapsesClairvoyant
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Create image

“He gazes through sunlight's buttresses, back down the refectory at the others, wallowing in their plenitude of bananas, thick palatals of their hunger lost somewhere in the stretch of morning between them and himself. A hundred miles of it, so suddenly. Solitude, even among the meshes of this war, can when it wishes so take him by the blind gut and touch, as now, possessively. Pirate's again some other side of a window, watching strangers eat breakfast.”

WarLostWishSidesMorningSolitudeHundredWindowBlindHungerStrangerMilesGutsBreakfastThickSunlightPirateBananasMeshWallowingPlenitude
Book:Gravity's Rainbow
Create image

“I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.”

MeanRealMatterFallWorryDefinedDataConsistentDelusionFalling ApartPsychiatristUnrealDelusionalExpediency
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Create image

“So generation after generation of men in love with pain and passivity serve out their time in the Zone, silent, redolent of faded sperm, terrified of dying, desperately addicted to the comforts others sell them, however useless, ugly or shallow, willing to have life defined for them by men whose only talent is for death.”

MenPainGenerationsDyingTalentWillingComfortSellsSilentUglyDefinedUselessZoneTerrifiedShallowFadedPassivity
Book:Gravity's Rainbow
Create image

“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.”

MomentsDreamMightFacesPoliticalMemoriesLossRaceCitiesParticularExpressionMaterialsProveInnocenceInjuryWoundedLoss Of Innocence
Book:Against the Day
Create image

“She touched the edge of its voluptuous field, knowing it would be lovely beyond dreams simply to submit to it; that not gravity's pull, laws of ballistics, feral ravening, promised more delight. She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember. Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity, its fine chances for permanence. But then she wondered if the gemlike "clues" were only some kind of compensation. To make up for her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night.”

IfsKindDreamMightWould BeRememberLawNightLostChanceKnowingCryFieldsFineDirectEdgesDelightLovelyClarityTouchedGravitySubmitClueTestedCompensationAbolishPermanenceVoluptuousEpilepticsBallistics
Book:The Crying of Lot 49
Create image

“It is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice - guessed and refused to believe - that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and they its children...”

IfsFeelsBelieveChildrenMovingBlackChanceWhiteForeverSkyReturnShapesNewsSurpriseBlack And WhiteRainbowCurvesSecond ChanceReservedBad NewsLatentNo Second ChancesParabola
Book:Gravity's Rainbow
Create image

“But on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As it it were you who could, somehow, save him. For the moment not caring who you're supposed to be registered as. For the moment, anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you are.”

WayHeartMomentsHomeWishBitsSleepCaringShouldersSupposed To BeTonightCheeksHollowWish YouNot CaringWay Home
Book:Gravity's Rainbow
Create image

“We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present-your future-a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty-the end of the capitalistic experiment. Once we came to understand the simpl...truth that earth's resources were limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalistic illusion fell to pieces. Those of us who spoke this truth were denounced as heretics, as enemies of the prevailing economic faith. Like religious Dissenters of an earlier day.”

EndsWholeFactsRunningEarthReligiousEnemyPovertyPiecesEconomicIllusionResourcesExperimentsFuelSpokesRefugeExhaustedYour FutureSeekersFamineSuppliesPrevailingHereticTerminal
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Create image

“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.”

IfsNeedsEnoughGovernmentDesireLeftInterestMastersProveSpeechClaimsCuriosityCreditInnocentInstantAbandonDisguiseCostumesBalladsCrankNimbleRadius
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Create image

“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.”

LittlesSaidLosesFantasyDearCeasePoisonCherishCriedTentaclesPharmacist
Author:Thomas Pynchon
Create image

“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.”

MomentsFallPrayerExampleLosingInjusticeComplicatedAccidentsConcentrationMisfortunesTake TimePhasesGodlyAccumulationEpiphanyUnansweredMoment Of TruthLosing Faith
Book:V.
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingWayShouldStoriesLightHappensRememberSpiritualLanguageAgreeObviousCertaintyConsistentMapsStrongestEpisodesGeographyWishful ThinkingRemembers Everything
Book:Against the Day
Create image