John Updike Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  John Updike

  Teacher, Appreciation, Art

  24 Copy quote

• A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.

  John Updike

  Glimpse, Photograph, Abyss

  13 Copy quote

• If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.

  John Updike

  Being Yourself, People, Pay

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit, Run”, p.157, Random House

  29 Copy quote

• Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

  John Updike

  Life, Rain, Sky

  124 Copy quote

• 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'.

  18 Copy quote

• A computer and a cat are somewhat alike - they both purr, and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don't necessarily share.

  John Updike

  Cat, Secret, Computer

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Updike

  Dream, Reality, Men

  "Why Updike delved into suicide killers' psyches", www.today.com. June 28, 2006.

  17 Copy quote

• Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

  John Updike

  Life, Faces, Fame

  FaceBook post by John Updike from Dec 26, 2013

  29 Copy quote

• There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.

  John Updike

  Writing, Something New

  7 Copy quote

• Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

  John Updike

  Government, Illusion, Should

  John Updike (2012). “Couples: A Novel”, p.470, Random House

  29 Copy quote

• The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.

  John Updike

  New York, Believe, People

  FaceBook post by John Updike from Dec 31, 2013

  24 Copy quote

• Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.

  John Updike

  People, Good Times, Feels

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit Redux”, p.122, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

  John Updike

  Success, Writing, Decay

  John Updike's acceptance speech for Edward MacDowell Medal, as quoted in New York Times, August 26, 1981.

  49 Copy quote

• Looking foolish does the spirit good.

  John Updike

  Doe, Fool, Spirit

  John Updike (2012). “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs”, p.247, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• We are cruel enough without meaning to be.

  John Updike

  Enough

  John Updike (1982). “Rabbit is Rich”, Fawcett Books

  6 Copy quote

• The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started.

  John Updike

  Fun, People, Dumb

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit Is Rich”, p.100, Random House

  15 Copy quote

• Our lives fade behind us before we die.

  John Updike

  Life, Behinds, Fades

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit Is Rich”, p.50, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic un-interestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?

  John Updike

  Atheist, Humanity, Intellectual

  John Updike (2012). “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs”, p.141, Random House

  14 Copy quote

• Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

  John Updike

  Pain, Writing, Honey

  FaceBook post by John Updike from Feb 22, 2013

  28 Copy quote

• It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

  John Updike

  Stories, Stones, Flow

  5 Copy quote

• The days are short,
  The sun a spark
  Hung thin between
  The dark and dark.

  John Updike

  Dark, Winter, Sparks

  John Updike, Nancy Ekholm Burkert (1989). “A Child's Calendar”, Knopf Books for Young Readers

  29 Copy quote

• Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

  John Updike

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  46 Copy quote

• America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

  John Updike

  Inspirational, Truth, America

  1980 Problems,'How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time'.

  10 Copy quote

• When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.

  John Updike

  New York, Book, Writing

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

  13 Copy quote

• If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead.

  John Updike

  Maturity, Cry, Mature

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit, Run”, p.112, Random House

  9 Copy quote

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