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
education pain learning
It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.
book writing looks
If you look at the best-seller list, it is mostly thrillers. Very few books attempt to create an image of the life we live. I knew there were writers who wore tweed coats and lived in Connecticut and somehow made a living, and that's what I aimed to do. I've tried to write as well as I can with books that say something to any reader.
two phrases literature
But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.
maturity mature cry
If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead.
art wall educational
The educational aspect of art shows has become overbearing: some of exhibits can leave you bleary from trying to read the walls. Presumably a piece of art is timeless and it can say something to us. You are taking away the right of art to talk for itself.
religion church weekdays
In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.
golf remember-you remembers-you
The muttered hint, "Remember, you have a stroke here," freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia.
people want compromise
Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want.
morning goes-on might
I'm not against TV; I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go.
sheep people mourning
People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.
jobs religion literature
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.
procrastination vagueness comfort
Vagueness and procrastination are ever a comfort to the frail in spirit.
states quantum binary
Faith is not so much a binary pole as a quantum state, which tends to indeterminacy when closely examined.
beauty naked revolutionary
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.