Quote #102

The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please.

More from John Updike

  1. Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
  2. The ending is where the reader discovers whether he has been reading the same story the writer thought he was writing.
  3. Possession diminishes perception of value, immediately.
  4. The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds …
  5. Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being.
  6. The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
  7. Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad; hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us
  8. We are most alive when we're in love.

All John Updike quotes