"Since the young Alexander Hamilton had thrilled to the sight of the Falls and saw in this heedless power the center of American industry, the Falls had plunged and thrashed and thrown up mists, and...the Falls remained an essentially wild thing at Paterson's heart, a distillation of all that is furious and accidental and overwhelming in nature, a gem of pure ruinous uncaring around which the aching generations came and went."

- John Updike, author, In the Beauty of the Lilies