Date: 1997

"And as soon as he sees him, he knows that this boy will be important to him, important beyond all measure, not because of who he is (he may never see him again) but because of the thoughts that are going on in his head, that burst out of him like a swarm of bees."

— Coetzee, J. M. (b. 1940)

Date: 1997

"Nevertheless, the memory lies like a weight upon him, the memory of the soft resistance of flesh and bone, and then the grinding"

— Coetzee, J. M. (b. 1940)

Date: 1997

"He does not want to know. So much does he not want to know that he can feel a hand go up inside his own head to block his ears, block his sight."

— Coetzee, J. M. (b. 1940)

Date: 1997

"She occupies now an entirely new angular relation to Mercy, to those refusals, among the Living, to act on behalf of Death or its ev'ryday Coercions,--Wages too low to live upon, Laws written by Owners, Infantry, Bailiffs, Prison, Death's thousand Metaphors in the World,--as if, the instant of h...

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1997

"Mason had more than once caught the old Astronomer watching Susannah with a focus'd Patience he recogniz'd from the Sector Room...as if waiting for a sudden shift in the sky of Passion, like that headlong change in Star Position that had led him to the discovery of the Aberration of Light,-- wai...

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1997

"The Loaf, the indispensible point of convergence upon every British table, the solid British Quartern Loaf, is like the Soul, Emptiness."

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1997

"Forgive me, Friend, I've again presum'd our Minds running before the same Wind."

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1997

"Is it something in this Wilderness, something ancient, that waited for them, and infected their Souls when they came?"

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1997

"But her innocent attention has reach'd unto the dead Vacuum ever at the bottom of my soul,-- humiliation absolute."

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1997

"What caretaker, what Verger of the Temple of the Self...?"

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)