Quotes from Thomas Pynchon

How could there be a winter—even this one—gray enough to age this iron that can sing in the wind, or cloud these windows that open into another season, however falsely preserved?

Perhaps it's theater, but they SEEM no longer to be Allies...though the history they have invented for themselves conditions us to expect postwar rivalries, when in fact it may all be a giant cartel including winners and losers both, in an amiable agreement to share what is there to be shared...

but politics between wars demands symmetry and a more elegant idea of justice, even to the point of masquerading, a bit decadently, as mercy. It is more complicated than mass execution, more difficult and less satisfying, but there are arrangements Tchitcherine can't see, wide as Europe, perhaps the world, that can't be disturbed very much, between wars...

Like many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts—census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.

Late capitalism is a pyramid racket on a global scale, the kind of pyramid you do human sacrifices up on top of, meantime getting the suckers to believe it's all gonna go on forever.

Astronomy is as soil'd at the hands of the Pelhamites as ev'ry other Business in this Kingdom,— and we ever at the mercy of Place-jobbery, as much as any Nincompoop at Court.

Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business.

You're hungry, Denis?" "Really. Hey, like Godzilla always sez to Mothra–why don't we go eat some place?

Everything glimmers, edges are extremely clear, illumination is low and very pure. Small clusters of white flowers peep out wherever you look. Everything blooms.

Put it this way—everybody has to have somebody to make em look good, which just happens to be you in this case.

History is not woven by innocent hands.

Drinks here weren't free, but by way of real-life neighborhood civility they were cheap enough.

Out of air so blue you can take it between your fingers, rug, and bring them back blue, they watch the dot slowly grow into a rusty old reconnaissance plane.

Not quite like my mother's, but still a real 'trip,'" Bigfoot confided, "though what I really go for here is the respect." "Didn't get much of that from your mom, huh?" Had Doc really said that or only thought it? He waited for Bigfoot to take offense, but the detective only went on. . .

Haven't you ever noticed, when you're this Blitzed and you want somebody to show up, they always do?

It was summer, a weekday, and midafternoon; no time for any campus Oedipa knew of to be jumping, yet this one was. She came downslope from Wheeler Hall, through Sather Gate into a plaza teeming with corduroy, denim, bare legs, blonde hair, hornrims, bicycle spokes in the sun, bookbags, swaying card tables, long paper petitions dangling to earth, posters for undecipherable FSM's, YAF's, VDC's, suds in the fountain, students in nose-to-nose dialogue.

Was that an exasperated sigh? "I wouldn't recommend your usual approach. He goes around with a dozen bikers, mostly Aryan Brotherhood alumni, to watch his back, all court-certified badasses. Try making an appointment for once." "Wait a minute, I ditched social-studies class a lot, but . . . Jews and the AB . . . Isn't there . . . something about, I forget . . . hatred?

In the smoky Berlin sky, somewhere to the left of the Funkturm in its steelwool distance, appears a full-page photo in Life magazine: it is of Slothrop, he is in full Rocketman attire, with what appears to be a long, stiff sausage of very large diameter being stuffed into his mouth, so forcibly that his eyes are slightly crossed, though the hand or agency actually holding the stupendous wiener is not visible in the photo.

a child roaming the night who missed the death before birth as certain outcasts do the dear lulling blankness of the community...

They found the countryside, this year, at peace by a scant few days. Already vines are beginning to grow back over dragon's teeth, fallen Stukas, burned tanks. The sun warms the hillsides, the rivers fall bright as wine. The saints have refrained. Nights have been mild. The frost didn't come. It is the spring of peace. The vintage, God granting at least a hundred days of sun, will be fine.

My mother is the war,' declares Roger Mexico, leaning over to open the door.

It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads.

Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.

Information. What's wrong with dope and women? Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?