Quotes by Thomas Pynchon

“Displaced Person’s SongIf you see a train this evening,Far away, against the sky,Lie down in your woolen blanket,Sleep and let the train go by.Trains have called us, every midnight,From a thousand ...”

“The film libraries on some of these channels." Elmina said. "I swear. There was one on last night. I couldn't sleep. After I saw, it, I was afraid ro sleep. Have you seen Black Narcissus, 1947?"Edd...”

“These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one”

“When Marilyn Monroe got out of the game, I wrote something like, Southern California's special horror notwithstanding, if the world offered nothing, nowhere to support or make bearable whatever her...”

“Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.”

“My belief is that recluse is a code word generated by journalists... meaning, doesn't like to talk to reporters.”

“I did not write those letters. This has been a hoax that I've had nothing to do with. I'm sorry it's gone on as long as it has.”

“Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras! Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! ...”

“Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneaker and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia.”

“Rachel was looking into the mirror at an angle of 45°, and so had a view of the face turned toward the room and the face on the other side, reflected in the mirror; here were time and reverse-time,...”

“You're Orthodox? No. Conservative? Young people never are. My parents were Orthodox. They believe, I believe, that whatever your father is, as long as your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish too beca...”

“The rest of the Crew partook of the same lethargy. Raoul wrote for television, keeping carefully in mind, and complaining bitterly about, all the sponsor-fetishes of that industry. Slab painted in ...”

“As spread thighs are to the libertine, flights of migratory birds to the ornithologist, the working part of his tool bit to the production machinist, so was the letter V to young Stencil. He would ...”

“Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it's impossible to determine ...”

“He had decided long ago that no Situation had any objective reality: it only existed in the minds of those who happened to be in on it at any specific moment. Since these several minds tended to fo...”

“You know how a boy is. There comes a time for departure, a point where he sees confirmed the suspicion he’d had for some time that his father is not a god, not even a oracle. He sees that he no lon...”

“The eyes of New York women do not see the wandering bums or the boys with no place to go. Material wealth and getting laid strolled arm-in-arm the midway of Profane’s mind. If he’d been the type wh...”

“Strangely the tumescence began to subside, the flesh at his neck to pale. Any sovereign or broken yo-yo must feel after a short time lying inert, rolling, falling: suddenly to have its hands it can...”

“Dream tonight of peacock tails, / Diamond fields and spouter whales. / Ills are many, blessings few, / But dreams tonight will shelter you.”

“History, the proverb says, is made at night. The European civil servant normally sleeps at night. What waits in his IN basket to confront him at nine in the morning is history.”