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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

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Thomas Pynchon
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: May 8
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Glen Cove
New York
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
Jr.
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
Like
Death
Record
Human
Creatures
Zeros
Everything
Computer
Deaths
Humans
Ones
Represented
Long
Records
String
Kind
Lives
Strings
Would
Individual
Creature
Life
Science
Patterns

More quotes by Thomas Pynchon

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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
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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.
Thomas Pynchon
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Liebig himself seems to have occupied the role of a gate, or sorting-demon, such as his younger contemporary Clerk Maxwell once proposed, helping to concentrate energy into one favored room of the Creation at the expense of everything else.
Thomas Pynchon
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Not me, paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen, right, you can never have too much.
Thomas Pynchon
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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
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Laboring through a world every day more stultified, which expected salvation in codes and governments, ever more willing to settle for suburban narratives and diminished payoffs--what were the chances of finding anyone else seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?
Thomas Pynchon
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Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
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To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.
Thomas Pynchon
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Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.
Thomas Pynchon
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I dream that I have found us both again, With spring so many strangers' lives away, And we, so free, Out walking by the sea, With someone else's paper words to say.... They took us at the gates of green return, Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why- Do children meet again? Does any trace remain, Along the superhighways of July?
Thomas Pynchon
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Ills are many, blessings few, but dreams tonight will shelter you.
Thomas Pynchon
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All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.
Thomas Pynchon
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They plot, they plot, sleeping or afoot they never let up.
Thomas Pynchon
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Shall I project a world?
Thomas Pynchon
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Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!
Thomas Pynchon
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[Oedipa Maas] awoke at last to find herself getting laid.
Thomas Pynchon
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There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.
Thomas Pynchon
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This spiritualist, this statistician, what are you anyway?
Thomas Pynchon
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But on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As it it were you who could, somehow, save him. For the moment not caring who you're supposed to be registered as. For the moment, anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you are.
Thomas Pynchon
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Can't say it often enough — change your hair, change your life.
Thomas Pynchon