John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updikewas an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 March 1932
CountryUnited States of America
fighting witness smallness
Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
fighting hunting fire
Women, fire in their crotch, won't burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works.
wall writing doors
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.
born burned right-time
If she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem.
facts foolish scribbles
Hope bases vast premises upon foolish accidents and reads a word where, in fact, only a scribble exists.
exercise thinking play
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
respect literature cost
Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.
easter new-york writing
When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.
firsts adultery constraints
The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
truth men literature
Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.
time partnership dissolving
By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.
encouragement mad support
The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.
writing sea sailing
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
cds play giving
Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.