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Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.

Thomas Pynchon

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
Someday it’ll all be done by machine. Information machines.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Computer Information Technology Transformation
Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Choice Fame Myself Photography
It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Beginning Character Force Simplicity Try Wrong
Ills are many, blessings few, but dreams tonight will shelter you.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Blessing Dreams Home Night Protection Yourself
Teamwork,” Koteks snarled, “is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It’s a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Avoid Responsibility Society Symptom Team Word Work
Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Abuse Greedy Love Machine Power Technology
Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Earth Illusion Meaning Philosophy Spiritual Transcendence World
My belief is that “recluse” is a code word generated by journalists; meaning, “doesn’t like to talk to reporters.”
THOMAS PYNCHON

Believe Code Journalist Media Myself Report Talk Word
What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Evil Goodness Meaning Myself People Sold Trust
All variables are independent.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Independent One Liner Variable
Shall I project a world?
THOMAS PYNCHON

One Liner World
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
Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Character Concept Death Page Writing Yourself
Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it: keep cool, but care.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Break Care Help Logic Public Yourself
You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Creature God Himself People Touch Yourself
Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Early Ignorance Life Ourselves Structure Trouble Writing
Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Accident Lesson Life Man Sanity Time
I was dreaming about my grandfather. A very old man, at least as old as I am now, 91. I thought, when I was a boy, that he had been 91 all his life. Now I feel as if I have been 91 all my life.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Boy Dreams Himself Life Man Myself Old Thinking
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
Perhaps its familiarity rendered it temporarily invisible to you.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Illusion Invisible Temporary Yourself
You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world’s intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there’s cataclysm.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Existence Fantasy Intrude Miracle Mission Peace Spiritual Time Touch World Yourself
Some of us are afraid of dying; others of human loneliness. Profane was afraid of land or seascapes like this, where nothing else lived but himself.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Afraid Death Himself Human Land Live Lonely Sea
Why should things be easy to understand?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Easy Philosophy Understand
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
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Question Worry Wrong Yourself
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

Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.

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Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.

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