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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

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
Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Despair Herself Sex Yourself
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
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
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
Ills are many, blessings few, but dreams tonight will shelter you.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Blessing Dreams Home Night Protection Yourself
Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Book Reading Time Wasted Time Yourself
Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Choice Fame Myself Photography
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
There is nothing so loathsome as a sentimental surrealist.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Emotion Realist Sentimental
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
Why should things be easy to understand?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Easy Philosophy Understand
Perhaps its familiarity rendered it temporarily invisible to you.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Illusion Invisible Temporary Yourself
Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Character Concept Death Page Writing 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
Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Dreams Essence Stupidity
The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Afraid Belief Division People Public Science
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
Can’t say it often enough — change your hair, change your life.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Change Enough Hairs Life 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
Our history is an aggregate of last moments.
THOMAS PYNCHON

History Moments Ourselves
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
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
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
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
If there is something comforting – religious, if you want – about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Comfortable Condition Connection Health Mental Religious Sick Worry
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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