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
I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish. — 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
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
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
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
“The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and… — John Updike Copy Share Image
“You have a life and there are these volumes on either side that go unvisited; some day soon as the world winds… — John Updike Copy Share Image
I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for… — John Updike Copy Share Image
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. Suspect each moment, for it… — 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
“Driving is boring," Rabbit pontificates, "but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering… — John Updike Copy Share Image
The creative writer uses his life as well as being its victim; he can control, in his work, the self-presentation that in… — John Updike Copy Share Image
So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and… — John Updike Copy Share Image
We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting… — John Updike Copy Share Image
We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth… — 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
