The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

It may have been an intuition that the letter would be newsless inside that made Oedipa look more closely at its outside, when it arrived.

“You came to talk about the play,” he said. “Let me discourage you. It was written to entertain people. Like horror movies. It isn’t literature, it doesn’t mean anything. Wharfinger was no Shakespeare.” “Who was he?” she said. “Who was Shakespeare. It was a long time ago.”

“You’re so right-wing you’re left-wing,”

The night was empty of all terror for them, they had inside their circle an imaginary fire, and needed nothing but their own unpenetrated sense of community.

“I came,” she said, “hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.” “Cherish it!” cried Hilarius, fiercely. “What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.”