Gravity's Rainbow

Without the War what could he have hoped for? But to be part of this adventure . . . If you cannot sing Siegfried at least you can carry a spear.

Only one fight, one victory, one loss. And only one president, and one assassin, and one election. True. One of each of everything. You had thought of solipsism, and imagined the structure to be populated—on your level—by only, terribly, one. No count on any other levels. But it proves to be not quite that lonely. Sparse, yes, but a good deal better than solitary. One of each of everything's not so bad. Half an Ark's better than none.

It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more than the day's breath, more than dark strength—it is an imperial presence that lives and moves.

. Slothrop's Progress: London the secular city instructs him: turn any corner and he can find himself inside a parable.

. Ruins he goes daily to look in are each a sermon on vanity. That he finds, as weeks wear on, no least fragment of any rocket, preaches how indivisible is the act of death . . .

What a damn fool thing. He hangs at the bottom of his blood's avalanche, 300 years of western swamp-Yankees, and can't manage but some nervous truce with their Providence.

he'd detach its pencil-smeared buck slip, go draw the same aging Humber from the motor pool, and make his rounds, a Saint George after the fact, going out to poke about for droppings of the Beast, fragments of German hardware that wouldn't exist, writing empty summaries into his notebooks—work-therapy.

Ha! Neither of them returning Slothrop's amiable nod. Tough shit, fellas. But shrewd Tyrone hangs around, distributing Lucky Strikes, long enough to find at least what's up with this Unlucky Strike, here.

It is the dark, hard, tobacco-starved, headachy, sour-stomach middle of the day, a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death ...

, to observe him in his trances across the blue baize fields and the terrible paper gaming, his eyes rolled back into his head reading old, glyptic old graffiti on his own sockets. . . .

Well, hrrump, heh, heh, here comes Pirate's Condition creeping over him again, when he's least expecting it as usual—might as well mention here that much of what the dossiers call Pirate Prentice is a strange talent for—well, for getting inside the fantasies of others: being able, actually, to take over the burden of managing them...

This well-scrubbed day ought to be no worse than any—
Will it?

There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screaming holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light? Will the light come before or after?

- Как-то на днях мы с сыночком Идиотом - не, Эллиотом - печеньице пекли. Послать это печеньице нашим мальчишечкам за море. А когда мальчишечки получат это наше печеньице, они тоже испекут печеньице и пошлют нам. И вот так у всех будет печеньице!

За это их краткое знакомство у Ленитропа сложилось впечатление, что данный осьминог душевно не здоров, хотя с чем тут сравнивать?

"Are we going to fail?"
"We're all going to fail," Sir Marcus primping his curls, "but the Operation won't."