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
artistic kept playing rather tend wallace
Our artistic heroes tend to be those self-exercisers, like Picasso, and Nabokov, and Wallace Stevens, who rather defiantly kept playing past dark.
demand passages rather stories
Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.
academic age although far john rather somewhat spokesman writer
John Barth, I think, was really a writer of my own age and somewhat of my own temperament, although his books are very different from mine, and he has been a spokesman for the very ambitious, long, rather academic novel. But I don't think that what he is saying, so far as I understand it, is so very different from what I'm saying.
might
Without books, we might just melt into the airwaves and be just another set of blips.
exile extremes grandeur host human likes plays york
My complaint, as an exile who once loved New York and who likes to return a half-dozen times a year, is not that it plays host to extremes of the human condition: There is grandeur in that, and necessity.
diminishes perception possession
Midas's Law: Possession diminishes perception of value, immediately
hard man played
Somehow, it is hard to dislike a man once you have played a round of golf with him.
artist brings destroying exist
The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before and he does it without destroying something else
family trying
I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession.
money seemed sold
I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'
bookstores harvard
When I went away to college, I marveled at the wealth of bookstores around Harvard Square.
almost arabic believer call prayer quite
Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot.
carrying majors narrow rocks tiger uphill
Tiger Woods did not always win majors with ease; after his narrow victory in the 1999 PGA, he slumped and sighed as if he'd been carrying rocks uphill all afternoon.
activity american-novelist becomes cares creative creativity doer merely name plus regular
Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.