Paranoia strikes deep.

In Thomas Pynchon's classic novel V. people admit to ruling the world, even if it isn't completely true.

Stencil shrank at the cold air moving in through the window.
"I'm not a priest. Don't try appealing to someone you've only known in a written confession. We do not walk ganged, Stencil, all our separate selves, like Siamese quintuplets or more. God knows how many Stencils have chased V. about the world."
"Fairing," Stencil croaked, "in whose Parish Stencil was shot, preceded your Father Avalanche."
"I could have told you. Told you the name."
"But."
"Saw no advantage in making things worse."
Stencil's eyes narrowed. Majistral turned, caught him looking cagy.
"Yes, yes. Thirteen of us rule the world in secret."

Though I got the number wrong (would it have been only coincidence if Magistral had said "six" rather than "thirteen"?), I was able to pull the basic quote out of my head even though I read the book about thirty years ago. But how do you find the exact quote without reading the book again?

The answer is, of course, a search engine, quite a bit of experience at searching for esoteric items, and a bit of luck. A rather close guess, honed down to what I could be relatively sure of, was enough to find the quote, and the page number in the book (and even a guide for interpolating the page number from the edition I once owned to the one that I could get my hands on). But if someone hadn't posted an extensive Web-Guide to Thomas Pynchon's "V." even an exact guess wouldn't have been of any help.

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