53 quotes
"If the U.S. was a person," he later became fond of saying, "and it sat down, Columbus, Ohio would instantly be plunged into darkness"
Against the Day (2006)
Out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
No need to feel pleas'd with yourself. What you found was not their sacred Well, but only a Representation of it.
Mason & Dixon (1997)
Flotsam from his childhood are rising through his attention. He's remembering the skin of an apple, bursting with nebulae, a look into curved reddening space.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
If America was a person, — and it sat down, — Lancaster town would be plunged into a Darkness unbreathable.
Mason & Dixon (1997)
There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
The man's thirst for guilt was insatiable as the desert's for water.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
She watches Marvy's face as he pays Monika, watches him in this primal American act, paying, more deeply himself than when coming, or asleep, or maybe even dying.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Right and left; the hothouse and the street. The Right can only live and work hermetically, in the hothouse of the past, while outside the Left prosecute their affairs in the streets manipulated by mob violence. And cannot live but in the dreamscape of the future.
Non-Masons stay pretty much in the dark about What Goes On, though now and then something jumps out, exposes itself, jumps giggling back again, leaving you with few details but a lot of Awful Suspicions.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
My belief is that "recluse" is a code word generated by journalists... meaning, "doesn't like to talk to reporters."
Write by WASTE. ... The government will open it if you use the other. The dolphins will be mad. Love the dolphins.
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
Everybody here drove around like a dedicated loser ... it was like the beach, where you lived in a climate of unquestioning hippie belief, pretending to trust everybody while always expecting to be sold out.
Those all must have all been important to me once. What I am now grew from that. A former self is a fool, an insufferable ass, but he's still human, you'd no more turn him out than you'd turn out any kind of cripple, would you?
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
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.
"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."
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
They are in love. Fuck the war.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Each will have his personal Rocket.
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
"You one of those right wing nut outfits?" inquired the diplomatic Metzger.
Fallopian twinkled. "They accuse us of being paranoids."
"They?" inquired Metzger, twinkling also.
"Us?" asked Oedipa.
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
It can get pretty fascist in here...
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)