Quotes from Thomas Pynchon

I've been in more wars for England than I can remember . . . haven't I paid enough? Risked it all for them, time after time. . . . Why must they torment an old man?

A todo el mundo se le dice que escriba acerca de lo que conoce. El problema para muchos de nosotros es que en la juventud creemos saberlo todo o, por decirlo de un modo más útil, con frecuencia desconocemos el alcance y la estructura de nuestra ignorancia, la cual no es sólo un espacio en blanco en el mapa mental de una persona, sino que tiene contornos y coherencia y, por lo que sé, también tiene sus normas".

The MMPI was developed about 1943. In the very heart of the war.....All the MMPI appears to test for is whether a man will be a good or bad soldier

She would give them order, she would create constellations

His life had been tied to the past. He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history—a known past, a projectable future. But Jessica was the breaking of the wave. Suddenly there was a beach, the unpredictable . . . new life.

He had no illusions about what could be done in the darkroom to enhance a human image, but Erlys, who had always been beautiful, was beyond all that now. Years of bitterness about how little she loved him sloughed away and Merle understood, miles down the line, the simple truth that Erlys had no more been his than the unfortunate Bert Snidells's, and that to persist in that belief anymore was to approach the gates of the laughing academy.

Why? Why use the room as introduction to an apologia? Because the room, though windowless and cold at night, is a hothouse. Because the room is the past, though it has no history of its own. Because, as the physical being-there of a bed or horizontal plane determines what we call love; as a high place must exist before God's word can come to a flock and any sort of religion begin; so must there be a room, sealed against the present, before we can make any attempt to deal with the past.

Each is a cold announcement of dead ends, suns that will refuse to stand, but flee south, ever south, leaving us to north-without-end.

Quello del saltimbanco è un mestiere in via di estinzione era solito ammettere nei suoi momenti di frivolezza. I migliori sono passati tutti alla politica.

Più vicino a te, o mio divano.

The face of the nymph was much like Oedipa's, which didn't startle her so much as a concealed blower system that kept the nymph's gauze chiton in constant agitation, revealing enormous vermilion-tipped breasts and long pink thighs at each flap. She was smiling a lipsticked and public smile, not quite a hooker's but nowhere near that of any nymph pining away with love either.

Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange? I thought it was cigarettes.

Cyprian was captivated by eyes, but only by those that looked away, with either indifference or active distaste. It was not enough for her to return his gaze. She must then direct her own to other matters. It sent him into a swoon. It got him through that day and part of the next sometimes.

And these acid adventures, they came in those days and they went, some we gave away and forgot, others sad to say turned out to be fugitive of false-but with luck one or two would get saved to go back to at certain later moments in life. This look from brand-new Prairie-oh, you, huh?-would be there for Zoyd more than once in years to come, to help him through those times when the Klingons are closing, and the helm won't answer, and the warp engine's out of control.

Proverbs for Paranoids, 4: You hide, they seek.

How they persist. The poor, the black. And the Jews! The Welsh, the Welsh once upon a time were Jewish too? one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, a black tribe, who wandered overland, centuries? oh an incredible journey. Until at last they reached Wales, you see.

C'è questo lungo collegamento a margherita di truffatori e di truffati, di fottitori e di fottuti? E se le cose stanno così, io chi è che fotto?

tale ossessione era come una serra: un posto a temperatura costante, senz'aria, stipato di varietà multicolori, di fiori innaturali.

Print causes Civil Unrest,— Civil Unrest in any Ship at Sea is intolerable. Coffee as well. Where are newpapers found? In those damnable Whig Coffee-Houses. Eh? A Potion stimulating rebellion and immoderate desires.

This person greeted the Cohen by raising his left hand, then spreading the fingers two and two away from the thumb so as to form the Hebrew letter shin, signifying the initial letter of one of the pre-Mosaic (that is, plural) names of God, which may never be spoken. "Basically wishing long life and prosperity," explained the Cohen, answering with the same gesture.

Alcuni di noi, però, pur non andando da nessuna parte, ingannano se stessi, convincendosi invece che stanno andando da qualche parte: per ingannarsi a questo modo ci vuole una specie di talento naturale, e le obiezioni che si levano a questo riguardo sono rare, ma ciò nonostante insidiose.

Love is love. It shows up in strange displacement.

Oh well, 'really'— it's like a woman isn't it, you look at each other, you think Of course not, she thinks Of course not,— yet the Alternatives hang about, don't they, like Wraiths.

staff who claim not to know a word of English beyond "awesome" and "sucks," which for a vast range of human endeavor, actually, is more than enough . . .