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John Updike
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I know more about what it's like to be elderly and infirm and kind of stupid, the way you get forgetful, but on the other hand I'm a littler, wiser, dare we say? The word 'wisdom' has kind of faded out of our vocabulary, but yeah, I'm a little wiser.
- John Updike
#Dare
#Know
#Stupid
#Way
#Wisdom
I must say, when I reread myself, it's the poetry I tend to look at. It's the most exciting to write, and it's over the quickest.
- John Updike
#Look
#Must
#Myself
#Poetry
#Say
That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.
- John Updike
#End
#Heaven
#Marriage
#Nothing
#Real
The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness.
- John Updike
#Architecture
#Bricks
#Consciousness
The theme of old age doesn't seem to fascinate Hollywood.
- John Updike
#Age
#Hollywood
#Old Age
#Old
#Theme
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.
- John Updike
#Celebrity
#Dark
#Light
#People
#Sympathy
Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.
- John Updike
#Childlike
#Golf
#Idiot
#Past
#Sports
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
- John Updike
#Criticism
#Open
#Poetry
#Sea
#Shore
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
- John Updike
#Adult
#Half
#Own
#Patience
#People
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.
- John Updike
#Barefoot
#Being
#Going
#Mere
#Naked
Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.
- John Updike
#Brainy
#Delivered
#Inspiration
#Material
The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images.
- John Updike
#Beauty
#Cinema
#Life
#Religion
#Success
A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.
- John Updike
#Choices
#Door
#Doors
#Know
#Walls
We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.
- John Updike
#Age
#Find
#Hero
#Interesting
#Past
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.
- John Updike
#Every
#Marriage
#Peasant
#Teacher
#Tends
Eros is everywhere. It is what binds.
- John Updike
#Binds
#Eros
#Everywhere
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
#Dreams
#Human
#Man
#Tension
#Your Dreams
We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
- John Updike
#Every
#Except
#Last
#Moment
#Survive
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.
- John Updike
#America
#Conspiracy
#Happy
#Make
#Vast
Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.
- John Updike
#About
#Activity
#Better
#Doing
#Right
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
#Children
#Education
#Parents
#Wisdom
Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
- John Updike
#Dreams
#Nature
#True
#Us
#Without
Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet.
- John Updike
#Fire
#God
#Imagination
#Sky
#War
Sex is like money; only too much is enough.
- John Updike
#Enough
#Like
#Money
#Sex
#Too Much
Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.
- John Updike
#Alone
#Bloom
#Dare
#Go
#Late
We are most alive when we're in love.
- John Updike
#Alive
#Love
#Most
#Valentine's Day
Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.
- John Updike
#Been
#Costs
#Respect
#Them
#Whatever
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
- John Updike
#Grace
#Life
#Nature
#Rain
#Sky
What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.
- John Updike
#Art
#Breathing
#Room
#Space
#Spirit
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