50+ Thomas Pynchon Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Convince Difficult Growth Humanity Spiritual
Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a letter, another lover.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Color Device Herself Lover Replacement
All investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Abstract Fear Human Investigation Mortal Time True
Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Myself Weird World
For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Fantasy Kind Vampire
What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove’s difference and the universe can be on into a whole ‘nother song.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Difference Notice Place Record Universe Yourself
If the world offered nothing, nowhere to support or make bearable whatever her private grief was, then it is that world, and not she, that is at fault.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Grief Mistake Offering Privacy Support World
Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Abuse Greedy Love Machine Power Technology
Length is usually intensity. Not time.
THOMAS PYNCHON

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

Blessing Desire Empty Man Woman
She may know a little, may think of herself, face and body, as ‘pretty’ but he could never tell her all the rest, how many other living things, birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments of simple peace, also gather in what she is to him.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Beautiful Body Face Herself Light Live Moments Peace Simplicity Sun Thinking
If patterns of ones and zeros were ‘like’ patterns of human lives and death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Computer Creature Death Human Kind Live Mathematics Patten Record Representation
Perhaps its familiarity rendered it temporarily invisible to you.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Illusion Invisible Temporary Yourself
A screaming comes across the sky.
THOMAS PYNCHON

One Liner Scream Sky
What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Body God Healing Need Stars Terrorism
There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Behavior Belief Chance Difference God Luck Operation Purity
They plot, they plot, sleeping or afoot they never let up.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Let Go Planning Sleep
What sort of an age is this where a man becomes one’s enemy only when his back is turned?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Age Enemy Himself Man
Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Character Concept Death Page Writing Yourself
Someday it’ll all be done by machine. Information machines.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Computer Information Technology Transformation
The reality is in this head. Mine. I’m the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, and sometimes other orifices also.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Eyes Head Reality Universe Visible
Real flight and dreams of flight go together. Both are part of the same movement. Not A before B, but all together.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Connection Dreams Movement Reality Togetherness
You go from dream to dream inside me. You have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you’ve found life. I’m no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are ‘yours’ and which are ‘mine.’ It’s past sorting out.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Dreams Ghost Image Life Passage Past Space Word Yourself
Like so 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.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Freedom Identity Name Place Purpose Road
Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Choice Fame Myself Photography
Shall I project a world?
THOMAS PYNCHON

One Liner World
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Question Worry Wrong Yourself

Thomas Pynchon Quotes

Famous American novelists