Quotes from Thomas Pynchon

Holy-Center-Approaching is soon to be the number one Zonal pastime. Its balmy heyday is nearly on it. Soon more champions, adepts, magicians of all ranks and orders will be in the field than ever before in the history of the game. The sun will rule all enterprise, if it be honest and sporting. The Gauss curve will herniate toward the excellent. And tankers the likes of Närrisch and Slothrop here will have already been weeded out.

receding in an asymmetric V to the east where it's dark and there are no more bars.

Stayed on, and became the Cymri. What if we're all Jews, you see? all scattered like seeds? still flying outward from the primal fist so long ago. Man, I believe that.' 'Of course you do, Gwenhidwy.' ¶ 'Aren't we then? What about you?' ¶ 'I don't know. I don't feel Jewish today.' ¶ 'I meant flying outward?' He means alone and forever separate: Pointsman knows what he means.

The Man has a branch office in each of our brains, his corporate emblem is a white albatross, each local rep has a cover known as the Ego, and their mission in this world is Bad Shit.

It's always night, or we wouldn't need light. —

All in his life, of what has looked free or random, is discovered to have been under some control. All the time- the same as a fixed roulette wheel.

Somewhere, among the wastes of the World, is the key that will bring us back, restore us to our Earth and to our freedom.

Rays, boys, rays," chuckled Scientific Officer Counterfly, busy with his photographic calibrations, "the wonders of our age, and rest assured none of 'em strangers to the spectrum of this fabled Italian sunlight. Just wait till we're back in the developing room, and you shall see a thing or two then, by Garibaldi, that you shall.

Names by themselves may be empty, but the act of naming.

So it is here, grouped on the beach with strangers, that voices begin to take on a touch of metal, each word a hard-edged clap, and the light, though as bright as before, is less able to illuminate . . . it's a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia, filtering in.

Slothrop's Progress: London the secular city instructs him: turn any corner and he can find himself inside a parable.

God's indifferent sunlight in all its bleaching and terror.

Destiny will betray you, crush your ideals, deliver you in the same detestable Bürgerlichkeit as your father, sucking at his pipe on Sunday strolls after church past the row houses by the river - dress you in the gray uniform of another family man, and without a whimper you will serve out your time, fly from pain to duty, from joy to work, from commitment to neutrality. Destiny does all this to you.

Morning developed out the window. His right canine ached. He unreeled the long hair, beaded with saliva, tooth-tartar, mouth-breather's morning fur, and stared at it. How'd it get here? Eerie, dearie.

During the night, Sir Stephen vanishes from the Casino. ¶ But not before telling Slothrop that his erections are of high interest to Fitzmaurice House.

The horizon was a biblical disaster.

Katje has understood the great airless arc as a clear allusion to certain secret lusts that drive the planet and herself, and Those who use her—over its peak and down, plunging, burning, toward a terminal orgasm . . . which is certainly nothing she can tell Slothrop.

The Chinese remind us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, yet they keep curiously silent about the step itself, which too often must be taken, as now, from inaccessible ground, if not indeed straight down into an unmeasured abyss.

Catching a TWA flight to Miami was an uncoordinated boy who planned to slip at night into aquariums and open negotiations with the dolphins, who would succeed man. He was kissing his mother passionately goodbye, using his tongue. I'll write, ma, he kept saying. Write by WASTE, she said, remember. The government will open it if you use the other. The dolphins will be mad. I love you, ma, he said. Love the dolphins, she advised him. Write by WASTE.

There is a danger of becoming too logical. At the end of the day one can only consult one's heart.

There came to McClintic something it was time he got around to seeing: that the only way clear of the cool/crazy flipflop was obviously slow, frustrating and hard work. Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care. He might have known, if he'd used any common sense. It didn't come as a revelation, only something he'd as soon not've admitted.

Dismiss the thought," protested Lindsay from a certain equine altitude, "for it would make us no better than common thieves.

Roger's heart grows erect, and comes. That's really how it feels. Up sharply to skin level in a V around his centerline, washing over his nipples... it is love, it is amazing.

A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt-- A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt. When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig, Though you may be thrown over by Tabby or Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig, You'll never go wrong with a pig!