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Thomas Pynchon Biography

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. (/ˈpɪntʃɒn/, commonly /-tʃən/; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist. A MacArthur Fellow, he is noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

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Thomas Pynchon Quotes

What North Europe thinks of as its history is actually quite provincial and of limited interest. Different sorts of Christian killing each other, and that's about it.

Christian, Different, Europe, Quite, Sorts, Thinking

This spiritualist, this statistician, what are you anyway?

Anyway, Spiritualist, Statistician

Losing faith is a complicated business and takes time. There are no epiphanies, no "moments of truth. " It takes much thought and concentration in the later phases, which thenselves come about through an accumulation of small accidents: examples of general injustice, misfortune falling upon the godly, prayers of one's own unanswered.

Prayer, Fall, Godly, Concentration, General, Misfortune

For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross

Cross, Crosses, Kind, Vampire

Some typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our little A4 could have ever hoped to.

Hoped, Littles, Pentagon, Typewriters, Whitehall

[Oedipa Maas] awoke at last to find herself getting laid.

Awoke, Getting Laid, Lasts, Maa, Maas, Oedipa

All variables are independent.

Independent, Variables

It takes, unhappily, no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a confessional.

Desk, Desks, Rooms, Turn, Writing

She touched the edge of its voluptuous field, knowing it would be lovely beyond dreams simply to submit to it; that not gravity's pull, laws of ballistics, feral ravening, promised more delight. She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember. Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity, its fine chances for permanence. But then she wondered if the gemlike "clues" were only some kind of compensation. To make up for her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night.

Dream, Knowing, Laws, Night, Shivering, Tested

So the city became the material expression of a particular loss of innocence – not sexual or political innocence but somehow a shared dream of what a city might at its best prove to be – its inhabitants became, and have remained, an embittered and amnesiac race, wounded but unable to connect through memory to the moment of injury, unable to summon the face of their violator.

Dream, Embittered, Face, Loss, Memories, Summon

"You are so close. " "To whom? Margravine, not even to himself. This place, this island: all his life he's done nothing but hop from island to island. Is that a reason? Does there have to be a reason? Shall he tell you: he works for no Whitehall, non conceivable unless, ha, ha, the network of white halls in his own brain: these featureless corridors he keeps swept and correct for occasional visiting agents. "

Brain, Correct, Islands, Place, Reason, White

this is america, you live in it, you let it happen. let it unfurl.

America, Happen, Happens, Let, Unfurl

Can't say it often enough—change your hair, change your life.

Change, Changing Your Life, Enough, Hair, Life, Say

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?

Dope, Insane, Medium, Real, Women, Wrong

Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.

Curiosity, Desire, Government, History, Instant

She thougt of sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west.

Faces, Library, Nobody, Sunrise, West

A weapon based on Time. . . " mused Viktor Mulciber. "Well, why not? The one force no one knows how to defeat, resist, or reverse. It kills all forms of life sooner or later. With a Time-weapon you could become the most feared person in history. " "I'd rather be loved," said Root. Mulciber shrugged. "You're young.

Force, History, Mused, Roots, Weapons, Why Not

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

Belief, Journalist, Meaning, Recluse, Reporters

It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home -- only the millions of last moments. . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.

Atheist, Broken, Fragments, Home, Message, Messenger

So generation after generation of men in love with pain and passivity serve out their time in the Zone, silent, redolent of faded sperm, terrified of dying, desperately addicted to the comforts others sell them, however useless, ugly or shallow, willing to have life defined for them by men whose only talent is for death.

Comforts, Dying, Men, Pain, Talent

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