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The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. So much has to be left behind now, so quickly.

— Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

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More quotes by Thomas Pynchon

Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

It is usually not wise to discuss matters of costume with people like this, — politics or religion being far safer topicks.

Mason & Dixon (1997)

All investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality.

Against the Day (2006)

What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

All Thomas Pynchon quotes →

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Pynchon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.