John Updike Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• Why does life feel, to us as we experience it, so desperately urgent and so utterly pointless at the same time?

  John Updike

  Doe, Feels, Urgent

  John Updike (2012). “Roger's Version: A Novel”, p.83, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.

  John Updike

  Art, Levels, Fields

  "A Few Words In Defense Of The Amateur Reader" by John Updike, www.nytimes.com. February 19, 1984.

  9 Copy quote

• You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.

  John Updike

  Book, Design, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.

  John Updike

  Country, Fiction, United States

  1995 Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels, introduction.

  5 Copy quote

• I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.

  John Updike

  Teacher, Husband, School

  "Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. June 12, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

• I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.

  John Updike

  Finishing, Bears, Painting

  John Updike (2006). “The Coup”, p.249, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

• I still believe in the American Dream. I see it in terms of freedom, and a government that trusts its people to exercise freedom, that this is not a government that allows you to give, that allows you to explore, and doesn't dampen your own creativity - in the broadest sense - with a lot of dictums or dogmas or restraints. So, insofar as we can remain a free country that allows for the interplay of personal energies. I think this is still a country that is not only working towards a dream, but actually is the dream in action.

  John Updike

  Country, Dream, Believe

  Source: www.achievement.org

  5 Copy quote

• Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.

  John Updike

  Memories, Joy, Tears

  John Updike (2011). “Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism”, p.68, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• Life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup.

  John Updike

  Life, Firsts, Grownups

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit Is Rich”, p.281, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• The Florida sun seems not much a single thing overhead but a set of klieg lights that pursue you everywhere with an even white illumination.

  John Updike

  Florida, Light, Illumination

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit at Rest”, p.75, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.

  John Updike

  Song, Attitude, War

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit at Rest”, p.462, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.

  John Updike

  Empires, Too Much, Littles

  John Updike (2010). “Rabbit Is Rich”, p.260, Random House

  5 Copy quote

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

  John Updike

  Respect, Cost, Literature

  1975 A Month of Sundays, ch.18.

  24 Copy quote

• All blessings are mixed blessings.

  John Updike

  Blessing

  5 Copy quote

• Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.

  John Updike

  Facts, Foolish, Scribbles

  "The Early Stories: 1953-1975".

  5 Copy quote

• Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.

  John Updike

  Art, Nature, Artist

  5 Copy quote

• Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.

  John Updike

  Writing, Eggs, Chickens

  5 Copy quote

• One of the cool, chaste countries - Canada or Sweden.

  John Updike

  Country, Sweden, Canada

  5 Copy quote

• Without rain, there would be no life.

  John Updike

  Rain, Would Be

  John Updike (2012). “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs”, p.41, Random House

  12 Copy quote

• My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me-to give the mundane its beautiful due.

  John Updike

  Beautiful, Reality, Giving

  John Updike (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.17, Knopf

  8 Copy quote

• Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.

  John Updike

  Dwarves, Littles, Fame

  5 Copy quote

• Hoping to fashion a mirror, the lover doth polish the face of his beloved until he produces a skull.

  John Updike

  Love, Fashion, Mirrors

  John Updike (2012). “Collected Poems, 1953-1993”, p.85, Knopf

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.

  John Updike

  Life, Memories, Drama

  6 Copy quote

• Baseball is meant to be fun, and not all the solemn money-men in fur-collared greatcoats, not all the scruffy media cameramen and sour-faced reporters that crowd around the dugouts can quite smother the exhilarating spaciousness and grace of this impudently relaxed sport, a game of innumerable potential redemptions and curious disappointments.

  John Updike

  Sports, Baseball, Fun

  7 Copy quote

Page 8 of 14

First

← Prev

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin