Thomas Pynchon Quotes

Only a genius can play a fool.

The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.

I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.

Insight into character comes from listening intently to the spoken word. The physical person, their charisma, charm and dramatic flair is more often used to persuade audiences, as they use these stealth tools of disguise and deception.

They were conspiring to desert us in the night and steal some of our horses... we engaged a spy.

When you see Robert Englund in a movie, you think he is the bad guy, but if I'm not the bad guy, and I'm supposed to just kind of fool the audience, it makes it a lot easier for whichever actor is the bad guy. So I find myself doing a lot of those, I think they're called red herring characters, faking out the audience.

For me, the facts in anything are always secondary. You don't lie convincingly with the truth. You lie convincingly with being a good liar.

Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.

Drug people are the very vermin of humanity.... Occasionally we must adopt their dress and tactics.

I’m sure if I quite openly charged Stanley with the task of taking possession in my name of some parts of Africa, the English will stop me. If I ask their advice they will stop me just the same. So I think I’ll just give Stanley some job of exploration which would offend no one, and will give us the bases and headquarters we can take over later.

In my lifetime I have never seen such a volume of deceiving and dissembling.

The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation

'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.

The more you play it the less you know about it.

When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

Ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow. Tyrion smiled. Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I'd feel sad about it. I will take that as high praise.

She wasn't here to gawk. She was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. And she had a mission.

The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they're learning something else.

I suppose the advocates of unreason think that there is a better chance of profitably deceiving the populace if they keep it in a state of effervescence.

They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.

Schemes within schemes. The Great Serpent is a good sign for you Aes Sedai, I think. Someday you may swallow yourselves by accident.

A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery, are in fact the same person.

I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.