"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
-John Updike
More like this
Before I became a writer, I assumed that some people (Nabakov, Updike, Bellow, etc.) were natural writers. They were born speaking in pithy prose, with taut sentences and interesting verb choice. But then, after reading all the usual Bellow masterpieces, I started reading his early novels.
While reading the New Yorker yesterday I came across this gem of a quote from the late John Updike, which eloquently expresses one of the ideas I was reaching for in my own Darwin Day post.
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
- John Updike
The torture of improbability and the tragedy of commons.
...plus the nightmares of things that never happen, the narrowmindness of our ambitions and perhaps to overestimate them. I don't understand why we have dreams, but does that matter for the universe at large? Things just are!