Thomas Pynchon Quotes

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above all things there stands the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of accident, the heaven of wantonness".

Chance is the nature of our universe. [...] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.

My life is a big accident, so where I end up, I think it's all accidents.

At its best, life is completely unpredictable.

It's luck that one thing works out and one doesn't, it's sort of happenstance.

I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.

It is such a complex matter we live within, it is impossible to track logic and decision making really, so therefore each choice can actually only be seen as coincidence.

I respond very easily to outside events. One's life is a matter of chance. Nothing that you've arranged for yourself works out.

History is totally unpredictable.

He [the historian] should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

Don't be surprised at Fortune's turns and twists: That wheel has spun a thousand yarns before.

Is there a design in the events of our lives? Or do things just happen, much like a junk yard falling down a staircase? If it's the latter, how do you deal with it?

You know, the process, I think, is the story. And it goes back, again, to what I said about chance and about radical contingency, the idea that all of this is this well-oiled machine that's been reared up and, like, really articulated and thought about.

Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions.

Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back.

I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.

I think that's as far as you have to think, everything happens as a coincidence. It either happens or it doesn't. It's hard to map out a strategic plan by saying, 'If I do that, that's going to get me to the next level.' I think that's the wrong way to go into movies as an actor. It doesn't happen for me that way.

It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else.

Chance is a name for our ignorance.

Every time I make a plan, God laughs at me.

There is always room for coincidence.

It's a lot like life. I think 99 percent of what goes on in life, we have very little control over.

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.