All John Updike Quotes
- The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life. Circumstance
- President George] Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance,… Age
- Pressed, I would define spirituality as the shadow of light humanity casts as it moves through the darkness of everything that can be explained. Casts
- 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… All
- 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. Even White
- My father provided; he gathered things to himself and let them fall upon the world; my clothes, my food, my luxurious hopes had fallen to… Clothes
- Being on TV is like being alive, only more so. Alive
- It's a man's world, they say; but in its daily textures it is a world created by and for women. Created
- The worst thing in the world is a bitter woman. That's one thing about your mother, she's never been bitter. Been
- Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by… Awe
- Nothing seems to matter quite as much. I no longer think about death in the concentrated way I once did. I don't know? you get… Age
- I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a… Administering
- Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality. Dwarf
- I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled… Ago
- I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners… Actress
- Looking foolish does the spirit good. April
- I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval… Carver
- You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life. Failure
- It's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson - the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man. Been
- Fiction is very greedy. It will take all you know and then some. The first novel I tried to write, I was struck by this… All
- Writers’ lives break into two halves, Break
- It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules. Ambiguity
- The creative writer uses his life as well as being its victim; he can control, in his work, the self-presentation that in actuality is at… Accidents
- The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible, like a saint's… Agony
- The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth,… Arrives