If patterns of ones and zeros were 'like' patterns of human lives and death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?
Thomas PynchonIf the world offered nothing, nowhere to support or make bearable whatever her private grief was, then it is that world, and not she, that is at fault.
Thomas PynchonI mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, โdelusionsโ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. Itโs the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.
Thomas PynchonIt's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home -- only the millions of last moments . . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.
Thomas Pynchon