Jim Porter

“Janet was a woman in whom early beauty had bred high expectations. Their disappointment brought with it a soured idealism, an idealism capable only of finding the world faulty.”
― John Updike, Couples

“What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it is to die. The pattern of ordinary life, in which so much stays the same from one day to the next, disguises the fragility of its fabric.”
― David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

“In her rare moods of liberation she held for him the danger that she would disclose great riches within herself, showing him the depths of loss frozen over by their marriage.”
― John Updike, Couples

“The environmental system of the Earth would collapse if the attempt were made to supply all human beings alive today with a European style of living. To suggest that such an increase in living standards is possible for a world population twice the present size by the early part of the next century is preposterous.”
― James E. Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity