“Picture postcards never show the bugs,” I told her. “Stinging ants, wasps, fleas, roaches the size of your hand. Postcards never show the heat.”

Source: The Falling Woman (1986), Chapter 1 (p. 13)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Picture postcards never show the bugs,” I told her. “Stinging ants, wasps, fleas, roaches the size of your hand. Postca…" by Pat Murphy?
Pat Murphy photo
Pat Murphy 15
an award-winning American author of science fiction and fan… 1955

Related quotes

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1970) " Notes On Structured Programming http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD249.PDF" (EWD249), Section 3 ("On The Reliability of Mechanisms"), corollary at the end.
1970s
Variant: Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but it is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence.

Evelyn Waugh photo
Van Morrison photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1969) J.N. Buxton and B. Randell, eds, Software Engineering Techniques, April 1970, p. 16. Report on a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Rome, Italy, 27–31 October 1969. http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1969.PDF Possibly the earliest documented use of the famous quote.
1960s

José Saramago photo
Lucretius photo

“Never trust her at any time, when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.”
Infidi maris insidis virisque dolumque ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book II, lines 557–559 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Ann Brashares photo
J.M.W. Turner photo

“Painting can never show her nose in company with architecture without being snubbed.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote c. 1840; as cited by by Charles Rob Leslie Vol. 1, (1860), p. 208; as quoted in The Life of J. M. W. Turner - Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by His Friends and Fellow Academicians, Walter Thornbury; Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 244
Turner's remark in the 1840's, when the new built Houses of Parliament in London were to be decorated with pictures
1821 - 1851

Nan Goldin photo
John Pilger photo

“I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, This much I know http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/13/pressandpublishing.observermagazine, The Observer, 13 November 2005

Related topics