“I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible.”

— John Updike , book The Centaur

The Centaur (1963)
Context: I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible. My father for all his mourning moved in the atmosphere of such laughter. He would have puzzled you. He puzzled me. His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs.

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 "I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts i…" by John Updike?

John Updike 240

American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, an… 1932–2009

Related quotes

“Missing like water in the desert, as a source of heat, you miss: my only perception of love.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Manchi come acqua nel deserto, come fonte di calore, manchi: mia unica percezione d'amore.
Source: prevale.net

“Yes. I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.”

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) Poet and journalist

"Adlestrop", line 1, cited from Collected Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p. 71.

“Suicide is a sudden accomplishment, a lightning-like deliverance: it is nirvana by violence.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

“I used to smoke marijuana. But I'll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening - or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early mid-afternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning... But never at dusk! Never at dusk, I would never do that.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Comedy album A Wild and Crazy Guy

“The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.”

Gloria Naylor (1950–2016) American writer

Source: Linden Hills

“One may dream of a culture where everyone bursts into laughter when someone says: this is true, this is real.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

1990s, Radical Thought (1994)

“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Epitaph on a Tyrant (1939), lines 5–6

“There is a peculiar atmosphere in the Committee this afternoon that I do not think that I am the only one to have sensed. It is not an agreeable atmosphere; it is an atmosphere of a certain embarrassment, or even suppressed tension. For a time I was striving to locate the parallel atmosphere of which I was being reminded. Then, suddenly, it occurred to me what it was. It is an atmosphere that will be familiar to nearly all hon. Members who have suffered a near and severe bereavement. We are in the circumstances of a household, between a decease and a funeral when the body is still in the house.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1977/feb/24/instructions-for-voting-please-read-1 in the House of Commons (24 February 1977). Two days previously a guillotine motion for the Bill had been defeated and it was generally accepted that there was no chance of the Bill being passed that session.
1970s

“She had a need to feel the thunder,
To chase the lightning from the sky,
To watch a storm with all its wonder
Written in her lover's eyes.
She had to ride the heat of passion
Like a comet burning bright,
Rushing headlong in the wind
Now where only dreams have been,
Burning both ends of the night.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

That Summer, written by Pat Alger, Sandy Mahl-Brooks, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, The Chase (1992)

“There was a little man, and he had a little soul;
And he said, Little Soul, let us try, try, try!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Little Man and Little Soul.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Updike 240

Related quotes

Related topics