# Quote — Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

> 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?

- Author: [Thomas Pynchon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon.md)
- Book: [The Crying of Lot 49](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/the-crying-of-lot-49.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#The_Crying_of_Lot_49_(1966)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/the-crying-of-lot-49/thered-been-no-escape

## More from this book

> Teamwork," Koteks snarled, "is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It's a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/the-crying-of-lot-49/teamwork-koteks-snarled.md)

> You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world’s intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there’s cataclysm.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/the-crying-of-lot-49/you-know-what.md)

> "Whenever I put the headsets on now," he'd continued, "I really do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about 'She loves you,' yeah, well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, shapes, sizes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/the-crying-of-lot-49/whenever-i-put.md)