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
gestures seems
But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it.
morning character fog
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.
said century 20th-century
Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
heart rocks literature
There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.
happiness children educational
And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.
green-world feels good-nature
In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature.
land littles towns
Being a divorcee in a small town is a little like playing Monopoly; eventually you land on all the properties.
beautiful opportunity treasure
Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried.
education hands inspire
You cannot but learn more of the world's heft, as you take it now into your hands.
firsts adultery breathe
The first breathe of adultery is the freest.
memories believe reality
When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept - the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.
dark winter sparks
The days are short, The sun a spark Hung thin between The dark and dark.
pigs littles pleasure
All those little congruences and arabesques you prepared with such delicate anticipatory pleasure are gobbled up as if by pigs at a pastry cart.
betrayal sacrifice loss
There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.