John Updike

[Nelson, to Harry] "...I keep feeling hassled."

He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it.

[Judy, 8, is watching TV] He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything.

...he feels a stifling uselessness in things, a kind of atomic decay whereby the precious glowing present turns, with each tick of the clock, into the leaden slag of history.

[Re Florida] Just not being senile is considered great down here.

"Things change," says Mr Shimada. "Is world's sad secret."

[Thelma] "...We're too old to keep being foolish."

...the Japanese interest him professionally. How do they and the Germans do it, when America's going down the tubes?

He supposes they pretty much have the picture. Most people do, in life. People know more than they let on.

[Nelson] "...I get none of the things a man's supposed to get from a wife."

God's country. He could have made it smaller and still made the same point.

"The papers exaggerate. They exaggerate everything, just to sell papers. The government exaggerates, to keep our minds off what morons they are."