Thomas Pynchon Quotes

Old men make wars that young men may die.

I'm not scared of growing old, I'm just scared of not achieving everything that I want to do.

There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

I do think about aging. I have those moments of panic and vanity, but life keeps getting better, so you can't worry about it too much.

All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction.

I thoroughly object to getting old. If you could let me be 16 again, I'd give you everything I've got and everything I'll ever have.

Nuclear arms kill many people all at once, but other weapons kill many people, little by little, every day, everywhere in the world.

When I was 27, I didn't have a clue what was going on! At that age, to have that much power and to have that much ambition is something.

Paris must not be a cemetery. I do not wish to reign over the dead.

The tongue is more to be feared than the sword.

Weapons are the tools of fear.

War is a terribly destructive force, even beyond the limits of the battlefronts and the war zones. It's influence involves the whole community. It warps men's judgement, distorts the true standard of patriotism, breeds distrust and suspicion among neighbors, inflames passions, encourages violence, develops abuse of power, tyrannizes over men and women even in the purely social relations of life, and terrifies whole communities into the most abject surrender of every right which is the heritage of free government.

What right have the rulers of nations to unsheath the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demons of desolation upon mankind, whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe?

The terror created by weaponry has never stopped men from employing them.

It takes only one person with a weapon to shatter a life, a family, a community.

Some of these little girls are afraid to admit they are getting older. I am not afraid. You can't put your finger in the sun and stop time.

I know the power of going to Mount St. Helens, and to see that level of devastation is quite something - the power of tsunamis, etc. But it's human cruelty, the base level of humanity, that scares me most.

Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Time is so strange and life is twice as strange. You must promise me not to live to be too old, William. It if is at all convenient, die before you're fifty. It my take a bit of doing. But I advise this is simply because there is no telling when another Helen Loomis might be born. It would be dreadful, wouldn't it, if you lived on to be very very old and some afternoon in 1999 walked down Main street and saw me standing there, aged twenty-one, and the whole thing out of balance again?

There's been rumors of war and wars that have been The meaning of life has been lost in the wind And some people thinkin' that the end is close by 'Stead of learnin' to live they are learnin' to die

Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.

As falls the dew on quenchless sands, blood only serves to wash ambition's hands.

I'll shoot my age if I have to live to be 105.