John Updike Quotes

To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.

In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.

We are most alive when we're in love.

The substance of fictional architecture is not bri... -John Updike

The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness.

The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.

Professionalism in art has this difficulty: To be professional is to be dependable, to be dependable is to be predictable, and predictability is esthetically boring - an anti-virtue in a field where we hope to be astonished and startled and at some deep level refreshed.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness... -John Updike

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature... -John Updike

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

The theme of old age doesn't seem to fascinate Hol... -John Updike

The theme of old age doesn't seem to fascinate Hollywood.

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the e... -John Updike

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

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.

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet.

That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.

What art offers is space - a certain breathing roo... -John Updike

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

Discovering the context

This quote suggests that art provides a unique space or platform that allows the human spirit to breathe and thrive, offering a sense of freedom, exploration, and expression.

Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat a... -John Updike

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

I was an only child. I needed an alternative to family life - to real life, you could almost say - and cartoons, pictures in a book, the animated movies, seemed to provide it.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after ... -John Updike

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder w... -John Updike

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be ... -John Updike

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

Discovering the context

This quote portrays inspiration as something external that is received and then transmitted or translated into creative or productive output. It implies that inspiration is a gift or resource that needs to be harnessed and shared with others.

John Updike Quotes

Popular Topic