Quotes from book
Inherent Vice

Name: Inherent Vice
Author: Thomas Pynchon

Inherent Vice is a novel by American author Thomas Pynchon, originally published in August 2009. A darkly comic detective novel set in 1970s California, the plot follows sleuth Larry "Doc" Sportello whose ex-girlfriend asks him to investigate a scheme involving a prominent land developer. Themes of drug culture and counterculture are prominently featured. Critical reception was largely positive, with reviewers describing Inherent Vice as one of Pynchon's more accessible works. The novel was adapted into a 2014 film of the same name.

“What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice

“… as long as American life was something to be escaped from, the cartel would always be assured a bottomless pool of new customers.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice

“You can only cruse the boulevards of regret so far, and then you've got to get back up onto the freeway again.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice

“Can't say it often enough - change your hair, change your life.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice

“What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove's difference and the universe can be on into a whole 'nother song.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice

“It creeped him out, the way it just sat there looking so plastic and harmless among the old-time good intentions of all that downtown architecture, no more sinister than a chain motel by the freeway, and yet behind its neutral drapes and far away down its fluorescent corridors it was swarming with all this strange alternate cop history and cop politics—cop dynasties, cop heroes and evildoers, saintly cops and psycho cops, cops too stupid to live and cops too smart for their own good—insulated by secret loyalties and codes of silence from the world they'd all be given to control, or, as they liked to put it, protect and serve.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice (2009), p. 137

“Everybody here drove around like a dedicated loser, expecting moment to moment to get into an accident. Doc could relate to this — it was like the beach, where you lived in a climate of unquestioning hippie belief, pretending to trust everybody while always expecting to be sold out”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

but he didn't have to enjoy that either, especially.
Source: Inherent Vice (2009), p. 225

“Charlie really has this, like, obsessive death wish! Yes! he, he wants to be caught, processed, put in a can, not just any can, you dig, it has to be StarKist! suicidal brand loyalty, man, deep parable of consumer capitalism, they won't be happy with anything less than drift-netting us all, chopping us up and stacking us on the shelves of Supermarket Amerika, and subconsciously the horrible thing is, is we want them to do it…”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice (2009), p. 119

“I apologize if I've interrupted some exceptionally demanding hippie task, like trying to remember where the glue is on the Zig-Zag paper, but it seems we have yet another problem, not unconnected with this fatality of yours for introducing disaster into every life you touch, however glancingly.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice (2009), p. 203

“Charlie really has this, like, obsessive death wish!”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Yes! he, he wants to be caught, processed, put in a can, not just any can, you dig, it has to be StarKist! suicidal brand loyalty, man, deep parable of consumer capitalism, they won't be happy with anything less than drift-netting us all, chopping us up and stacking us on the shelves of Supermarket Amerika, and subconsciously the horrible thing is, is we want them to do it...
Source: Inherent Vice (2009), p. 119