“There'd been no escape. What did she so desire to escape from?”
Source: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Chapter 1
Context: There'd been no escape. What did she so desire to escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: and what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited upon her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disc jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Thomas Pynchon134
American novelist 1937Related quotes
“Forget about what you are escaping from. Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.”
Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Part I, ch. 2
Variant: "Forget about what you are escaping from," he said, quoting an old maxim of Kornblum's. "Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to."
Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
“What really did I escape from, thought I saw Gods face on the design in my vintage Claiborne”
Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur
In His Own Words
On Albums, Distant Relatives (2010)
“Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.”
Wallace Stevens book Harmonium
"Metaphors of a Magnifico"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: The boots of the men clump
On the boards of the bridge.
The first white wall of the village
Rises through fruit-trees.
Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint
Homily during the Holy Mass on Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, on 1 October 1979, during the pope's first apostolic journey to the United States <br class="br">Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19791001_usa-boston_en.html