Quotes from book

Rabbit at Rest

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

“This airport has been designed with big windows viewing the runways, so if there's a crash everybody can feast upon it with their own eyes. The fireball, the fuselage doing a slow skidding twirl, shedding its wings.”

“Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago.”

“[Harry to Janice, about the financial situation] "…You're in real trouble."
"I know… But you have to have faith. You've taught me that."
"I have?" He is pleasantly surprised, to think that in thirty-three years he has taught her anything. "Faith in what?"”

“I mean," he says, "how the hell do you think it feels? Sitting there and having the plane explode?”

“…If you could ever get the poor to vote in this country, you'd have socialism. But people want to think rich. That's the genius of the capitalist system: either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be.”

“This is the last night when he is nowhere. Tomorrow, life will find him again.”

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

“[Nelson, to Harry] "…I keep feeling hassled."
"That's life, Nelson. Hassle."”

“…there ought to be a law that we change identities and families every ten years or so.”

“He could have gone over that night and faced the music but how much music is a man supposed to face?”

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

“There is very little thanks in history. Dog eat dog.”

“A woman you've endured such a gnawing of desire for, you can't help bearing a little grudge against, when the ache is gone.”

“…"That disease he has does an awful job on you. Your lungs fill up."”

“[Harry, talking about the doctor who came to the ward and then went away. ] "That guy has a thing about potato chips and hot dogs. If God didn't want us to eat salt and fat, why did He make them taste so good?"”

“She closes her eyes and wordlessly thinks of all the misery sex has caused the world…”

“The smell of good advice always makes Rabbit want to run the other way.”