Quotes from book
Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest
John Updike

Rabbit at Rest is a 1990 novel by John Updike. It is the fourth and final novel in a tetralogy, succeeding Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; and Rabbit Is Rich. A related novella, Rabbit Remembered, was published in 2001. Rabbit at Rest won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991, the second "Rabbit" novel to garner that award.

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“Whenever somebody tells me to do something my instinct's always to do the opposite. It's got me into a lot of trouble, but I've had a lot of fun.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

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

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

“"… 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.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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“But the fast lane too gets to be a rut.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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“[A grandchild barely able to remember Harry's own mother] But can Ma be no more than that in this child's memory? Do we dwindle so fast to next to nothing?”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

“There had been a lot of death in the newspapers lately. […] and then before Christmas that Pan Am Flight 103 ripping open like a rotten melon five miles above Scotland and dropping all these bodies and flaming wreckage all over the golf course and the streets of this little town like Glockamorra, what was its real name, Lockerbie. Imagine sitting there in your seat being lulled by the hum of the big Rolls-Royce engines and the stewardesses bringing the clinking drinks caddy and the feeling of having caught the plane and nothing to do now but relax and then with a roar and a giant ripping noise and scattered screams this whole cozy world dropping away and nothing under you but black space and your chest squeezed by the terrible unbreathable cold, that cold you can scarcely believe is there but that you sometimes actually feel still packed into the suitcases, stored in the unpressurised hold, when you unpack your clothes, the dirty underwear and beach towels with the merciless chill of death from outer space still in them. […] Those bodies with hearts pumping tumbling down in the dark. How much did they know as they fell, through air dense like tepid water, tepid gray like this terminal where people blow through like dust in an air duct, to the airline we're all just numbers on the computer, one more or less, who cares? A blip on the screen, then no blip on the screen. Those bodies tumbling down like wet melon seeds.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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“Driving is boring," Rabbit pontificates, "but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

“Rabbit feels as if the human race is a vast colourful jostling bristling parade in which he is limping and falling behind.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

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

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

“[Dr Breit] "It's irrational, but so's the human species."”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

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“Charlie interrupts impatiently, "Pain is where it's at for punks. Mutilation, self-hatred, slam dancing. For these kids today, ugly is beautiful. That's their way of saying what a lousy world we're giving them. No more rain forests. Toxic waste. You know the drill."”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

“Something about being helpless in bed, people hit you up for sympathy. They've got you where they want you.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

John Updike photo

“Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Context: Now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun. No more nuns, no more rabbis. No more good people, waiting to have their fun in the afterlife. The thing about the afterlife, it kept this life within bounds somehow, like the Russians. Now there's just Japan, and technology, and the profit motive, and getting all you can while you can.