Quotes from Thomas Pynchon

Perhaps the Ci-ty dreamed of an-other, en-emy city, float-ing across the sea to invade the es-tuary . . . or of waves of darkness . . . waves of fire . . . Perhaps of being swallowed again, by the immense, the si-lent Mother Con-tinent? It's none of my business, city dreams. . . . But what if the Ci-ty were a growing neo-plasm, across the centuries, always chang-ing to meet exactly the chang-ing shape of its very worst, se-cret fears?

It's nothing he can see or lay hands on-sudden gases, a violence upon the air and no trace afterward...a Word, spoken with no warning into your ear, and then silence forever. Beyond its invisibility, beyond hammerfall and doomcrack, here is its real horror, mocking, promising him death with German and precise confidence, laughing down all of Tantivy's quiet decencies...no, no bullet with fins, Ace...not the Word, the one Word that rips apart the day....

a pocket full of spare change and anger unlimited, what more does a 30-year-old innocent need to make his way in the city?

Around then Jade happened by again. "Thought that was you," Doc said, "though we ain't exactly been wallerin in eye contact. Got your note at the office, but why'd you go runnin away like that? we could've hung out, you know, smoke some shit.

Projectors, Brokers of Capital, Insurancers, Peddlers upon the global Scale, Enterprisers and Quacks,— these are the last poor fallen and feckless inheritors of a knowledge they can never use, but in the service of Greed.

For many people laughing is a way of being loud without having to say a thing.

Neither of them had ever had much interest in breaking each other's heart.

Soon the mercilessly even drumbeat fill'd the Day, replacing the accustom'd rhythms of country People with the controlling Pulse of military Clock-Time, announcing that all events would now occur at the army's Pleasure, upon the army's schedule.

You remember the comics in the Daily News? Dick Tracy's wrist radio? it'll be everywhere, the rubes'll all be begging to wear one, handcuffs of the future. Terrific. What they dream about at the Pentagon, worldwide martial law.

Of course it happened. Of course it didn't happen.

New York as a character in a mystery would not be the detective, would not be the murderer. It would be the enigmatic suspect who knows the real story but isn't going to tell it. —DONALD E. WESTLAKE

Where may one breathe?" demands one Continental Macaroni, in a yellow waistcoat, "— in New-York, Taverns have rooms where Smoke is prohibited." "Tho' clearly," replies the itinerant Stove-Salesman Mr. Whitpot, drawing vigorously at his Pipe, "what's needed is a No-Idiots Area.

It is an ajtys—a singing-duel. The boy and girl stand in the eye of the village carrying on a mocking well-I-sort-of-like-you-even-if-there's-one-or-two-weird-things-about-you-for-instance—kind of game while the tune darts in and out of qobyz and dombra strummed and plucked.

Es el cálido, romántico verano de 1945 y, con rendición o sin ella, persiste el culto de la muerte: acaba de perpetrarse lo que la Abuelita llamaba «un crimen pasional», la técnica preferida en nuestros días para resolver disputas interpersonales, a falta de pasión por cualquier otro aspecto de la vida.

Some mornings they awake and can believe that they traverse an Eden, unbearably fair in the Dawn, squandering all its Beauty, day after day unseen, bearing them fruits, presenting them Game, bringing them a fugitive moment of Peace,--how, for days at a time, can they not, dizzy with it, believe themselves pass'd permanently into Dream...?

They but appear a solemn People,— worshipping Laughter, rather, as a serious, indeed holy, Force in Nature, never to be invok'd idly.

Consider," replies the Geomancer, "— Adam and Eve ate fruit from a Tree, and were enlighten'd. The Buddha sat beneath a Tree, and he was enlighten'd. Newton, also sitting beneath a Tree, was hit by a falling Apple,— and he was enlighten'd. A quick overview would suggest that Trees produce Enlightenment. Trees are not the Problem. The Forest is not an Agent of Darkness. But it may be your Visto is.

Y qué quieres?, ¿es que sólo tengo que fiarme de las buenas personas?, tío, a las buenas personas las compran y las venden todos los días. Tanto da que me fíe de algún auténtico cabrón de vez en cuando, al final viene a ser lo mismo. Quiero decir que no apostaría por ninguno de los dos.

As if auditioning for widowhood, Sloane Wolfmann strolled in from poolside wearing black spiked-heeled sandals, a headband with a sheer black veil, and a black bikini of negligible size and made of the same material as the veil.

For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross.

They steered south. Gordita Beach emerged from the haze, gently flaking away in the salt breezes, the ramshackle town in a spill of weather-beaten colors, like paint chips at some out-of-the-way hardware store, and the hillside up to Dunecrest, which Doc had always thought of, especially after nights of excess, as steep, a grade everybody sooner or later wiped their clutch trying to get up and out of town on, looking from out here strangely flat, hardly there at all.

What's known as bleeding-edge technology," sez Lucas. "No proven use, high risk, something only early-adoption addicts feel comfortable with.

Sometimes things aren't very clear, that's all. Things look like they're going against us, and though it always turns out fine in the end, and we can always look back and say oh of course it had to happen that way, otherwise so-and-so wouldn't have happened--still while it's happening, in my heart I keep getting this terrible fear, this empty place, and it's very hard at such times really to believe in a Plan with a shape bigger than I can see...

He's wasted gallons of paint thinner striking his faithful Zippo, its charred wick, virility giving way to thrift, rationed down to a little stub, the blue flame sparking about the edges in the dark, the many kinds of dark, just to see what's happening with her face. Each new flame, a new face.