Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews. — John Updike Copy Share Image
We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters. — John Updike Copy Share Image
“Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.” — John Updike Copy Share Image
I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. — John Updike Copy Share Image
The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or… — John Updike Copy Share Image
One of the nice things about having a lover, it makes you think about everything anew. The rest of your life becomes… — John Updike Copy Share Image
My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to… — John Updike Copy Share Image
In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and… — John Updike Copy Share Image
The throat: how strange, that there is not more erotic emphasis upon it. For here, through this compound pulsing pillar, our life… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Basically it's true that my own life has been my chief window for life in America, beginning with my childhood and the… — John Updike Copy Share Image
The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when… — John Updike Copy Share Image
As I get older, my childhood self becomes more accessible to me, but selectively, in images as stylized and suspect as moments… — John Updike Copy Share Image
There is a great deal of busywork to a writer's life, as to a professor's life, a great deal of work that… — John Updike Copy Share Image
We are living in a world in which we don't give the young enough reason to live. The temper and the lyrics… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Narrative and metaphysics alike become flimsy and frivolous if they venture too far from the home base of all humanism - the… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Think binary. When matter meets antimatter, both vanish, into pure energy. But both existed; I mean, there was a condition we'll call… — John Updike Copy Share Image
The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from… — John Updike Copy Share Image
“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in… — John Updike Copy Share Image
If you look at the best-seller list, it is mostly thrillers. Very few books attempt to create an image of the life… — John Updike Copy Share Image
I write about, more or less, everything I can think of, that is I stretch my imagination as far as it'll go.… — John Updike Copy Share Image
“Is it not the singularity of life that terrifies us? Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies… — John Updike Copy Share Image
From the standpoint of a Middle Eastern citizen, Americans look like a bully forcing our way of life on the Islamic way… — John Updike Copy Share Image
You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life. — John Updike Copy Share Image
My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. — John Updike Copy Share Image
I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish. — John Updike Copy Share Image
“Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.” — John Updike Copy Share Image
All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Life is a roller coaster, you have your ups and downs unless you fall off. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Life is a video game. No matter how good you get, you are always zapped in the end. — John Updike Copy Share Image
Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us. — John Updike Copy Share
I assume my stance, and take back the club, low, slowly; at the top, my eyes fog over, and my joints dip and swirl… — John Updike Copy Share
The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd; raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our… — John Updike Copy Share
Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other's way, what a tangle. — John Updike Copy Share
“The mind cannot fall asleep as long as it watches itself. Only when the mind moves unwatched and becomes absorbed in images that tug… — John Updike Copy Share
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications… — John Updike Copy Share
“Her hair had been going gray as long as he could remember; she bundled it behind in a bun held with hairpins that he… — John Updike Copy Share
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 Copy Share
“Some people find fall depressing, others hate spring. I've always been a spring person myself. All that growth, you can feel Nature groaning, the… — John Updike Copy Share
![“The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.” quote by John Updike](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/03e/john-updike-396_agreement_the-illusion-is-an-agreement-between-the_2135947.png)
