John Updike Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

  John Updike

  Inspiration, Literature, Materials

• Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

  John Updike

  Life, Experience, Doe

  "Self-Consciousness: Memoirs". Book by John Updike, 1989.

• A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

  John Updike

  Leadership, Men, People

  John Updike (2012). “The Coup: A Novel”, p.172, Random House

• The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

  John Updike

  Self, Essentials, Literature

  1989 Self-Consciousness, I.'A Soft Spring Night in Shillington'.

• What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

  John Updike

  Teacher, Appreciation, Art

• The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

  John Updike

  Space, Religion, Stories

  John Updike (2009). “More Matter: Essays and Criticism”, p.185, Random House

• We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

  John Updike

  Literature, Lasts, Moments

  John Updike, James Plath (1994). “Conversations with John Updike”, p.11, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

  John Updike

  Artist, Risk, Excess

  John Updike (2012). “Assorted Prose”, p.189, Random House

• Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

  John Updike

  Marriage, Teacher, Aristocracy

  John Updike (2012). “Couples: A Novel”, p.72, Random House

• The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.

  John Updike

  Education, Children, Father

  John Updike (1963). “The Centaur”, Ballantine Books

• Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.

  John Updike

  Truth, Men, Literature

  "Self-Consciousness: Memoirs". Book by John Updike, 1989.

• When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

  John Updike

  Easter, New York, Writing

  John Updike (2013). “Picked-Up Pieces: Essays”, p.472, Random House

• The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.

  John Updike

  Encouragement, Mad, Support

• Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

  John Updike

  Respect, Cost, Literature

  1975 A Month of Sundays, ch.18.

• From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

  John Updike

  Infancy Is, Secret, Spy

  "Bech: A Book". Book by John Updike, 1965.

• Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.

  John Updike

  Jobs, Religion, Literature

  John Updike (2012). “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs”, p.228, Random House

• There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.

  John Updike

  Heart, Rocks, Literature

  "Buchanan Dying: A Play (Act II)". Book by John Updike, 1974.

• But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

  John Updike

  Two, Biographies, Phrases

  John Updike (2012). “Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism”, p.838, Random House

• Literature gives us models of living human beings who may not agree with us and even be our enemies. D. H. Lawrence said that the purpose of literature was to expand our sympathies. To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. And this conflict cannot be easily reconciled. The tension is always there as a kind of a pain in the human condition.

  John Updike

  Dream, Pain, Reality

  Source: www.today.com

• Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

  John Updike

  Home, Car, Literature

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