Carolina QuotesShe would have come from Paradise and complained to God that the apple wasn’t a winesap at all, but a great big pulpy Washington Delicious; and after the Ark she would have said that there had not been the animals, the spring rains, and the nice long ocean-voyage the prospectus from the travel agency had led her to expect — and that she had been most disappointed at not finding on Mount Ararat Prometheus.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
Chapter 1, p. 9
- work
- Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel]
- year
- 1954
- locator
- p. 9
Cite this record
“She would have come from Paradise and complained to God that…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-B147BEC133. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/b147bec133
More from Randall Jarrell
Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you think them fools; and after a time, right or wrong, you think them fools simply because they oppose you. Similarly, you write true things or good things, and end by thinking things true or good simply because you write them
[W.H.] Auden has gone in the right direction, and a great deal too far.
It is ugly ducklings, grown either into swans or into remarkably big, remarkably ugly ducks, who are responsible for most works of art; and yet how few of these give a truthful account of what it was like to be an ugly duckling! — it is almost as if the grown, successful swan had repressed most of the memories of the duckling’s miserable, embarrassing, magical beginnings. (The memories are deeply humiliating in two ways: they remind the adult that he was once more ignorant and gullible and emotional than he is; and they remind him that he once was, potentially, far more than he is.)