John Updike

"...Nelson'll be thirty-three in a couple of months." He thinks it would be a waste of breath, and maybe offensive, to explain to Mr Shimada that at that same age Jesus Christ was old enough to be crucified and redeem mankind.

[Nelson] "...One nice thing about Florida, it makes Pennsylvania look unspoiled."

In show business you learn to let it slide off your back. You know, fuck 'em. Otherwise you'd kill yourself.

Not his problem. Fewer and fewer things are.

Weeds don't know they're weeds.

[At news that Nelson got himself a counsellor] Harry feels a jealous, resentful pang. His boy is being taken over. His fatherhood hasn't been good enough. They're calling in the professionals.

[re a woman on TV on 'Wheel of Fortune'] She makes you proud to be a two-legged mammal.

When you feel irresistable, you're hard to resist.

[about the past, and Mary Ann, before Harry went to do his two years in the army] Maybe she sensed something about him. A loser. Though at eighteen he looked like a winner.

She closes her eyes and wordlessly thinks of all the misery sex has caused the world...

"Who wants to fish, if you're halfway civilised? Dangling some dead meat in front of some poor brainless thing and then pulling him up by a hook in the roof of his mouth? Cruellest thing people do is fish."

Mim has hung up. She has a life to get on with.