# Quote — Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado

> Halfway through writing the book, I still had no title. It came wonderfully into being when I complimented my host at a party on his flourishing avocado plant. I said, I’d kept trying and failing with my own avocado pits. Someone said, what you’ve got is a dud avocado, and Ken said, that’s a good title for a novel. I thought, this title is mine, and it was. Ken and I had the same agent, and for a publisher we decided on Victor Gollancz, who was so good with first novels. Wonderfully, he accepted it, but with several caveats. He didn’t like the title. It sounded like a cookbook. He also wanted me to write under my married name. I said no to both. He accepted. He decided it needed a subtitle, "La Vie Amoureuse of Sally Jay in Paris." I said, Oh no, no! He said, this was the first time in his experience that an unknown writer had complained about a book cover. However, he did put on the book’s jacket that the subtitle was the publisher’s. Ken read it in proof and said, "You’ve got a thumping great best-seller here." Curiously, the first thing I felt was relief. I believed him. No one could predict how a play or novel would be received by the public like Ken could. And only then was I set free to let excitement take hold of me.

- Author: [Elaine Dundy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elaine-dundy.md)
- Book: [The Dud Avocado](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elaine-dundy/the-dud-avocado.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elaine_Dundy#Afterword_to_The_Dud_Avocado_(2006)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/elaine-dundy/the-dud-avocado/halfway-through-writing

## More from this book

> Slowly his eyes left my hair and traveled downwards. This time he really took in my outfit and then that Look that I’m always encountering; that special one composed in equal parts of amusement, astonishment and horror came over his face.
>
> I am not a moron and I can generally guess what causes this look. The trouble is, it’s always something different.
>
> I squirmed uncomfortably, feeling his eyes bearing down on my bare shoulders and breasts.
>
> "What the hell are you doing in the middle of the morning with an evening dress on?” he asked me finally.
>
> "Sorry about that,” I said quickly, "but it’s all I’ve got to wear. My laundry hasn’t come back yet.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elaine-dundy/the-dud-avocado/slowly-his-eyes.md)

> Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people are. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply wasn’t. I’m positive of that.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elaine-dundy/the-dud-avocado/ridiculous-as-the.md)

> The sun shone on: the shade of the awning vanished in the hot, white, shadowless midday. In that blaze of heat I was loving Paris as never before.
>
> And there sitting opposite me, stretching himself luxuriously in the sun, his eyes lazily examining his half-empty drink, was Larry, the one I loved the best … sensationally uninterested.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elaine-dundy/the-dud-avocado/the-sun-shone.md)