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" A lot of the Koran does not speak very eloquently to a Westerner. Much of it is either legalistic or opaquely poetic. "
John Updike
Does
Much
Speak
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
John Updike
Life
Book
Movies
" If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself. "
John Updike
Know
Trying
Thought
" A seventeenth-century house tends to be short on frills like hallways and closets; you must improvise. "
John Updike
Must
House
Improvise
" Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism. "
John Updike
Going
Barefoot
Being
" 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. "
John Updike
Children
Wisdom
Parents
" 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. "
John Updike
Two
Through
Poet
" Authors should be honored only for their works. "
John Updike
Honored
Only
Should
" It is not an aesthetic misstep to make the viewer aware of the paint and the painter's hand. Such an empathetic awareness lies at the heart of aesthetic appreciation. "
John Updike
Appreciation
Paint
Heart
" Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading. "
John Updike
Government
Madness
Either
" There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes. "
John Updike
Hearts
New
Pleasing
" There's something very reassuring... about the written record. "
John Updike
About
Something
Very
" Eros is everywhere. It is what binds. "
John Updike
Eros
Everywhere
Binds
" For whatever crispness and animation my writing has I give some credit to the cartoonist manque. "
John Updike
Credit
Writing
Whatever
" The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images. "
John Updike
Losing
Spiritual
Success
" By the mid-17th century, telescopes had improved enough to make visible the seasonally growing and shrinking polar ice caps on Mars, and features such as Syrtis Major, a dark patch thought to be a shallow sea. "
John Updike
Dark
Thought
Sea
" Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. "
John Updike
Doing
Right
Better
" I picked up 'On Moral Fiction' in the bookstore and looked up myself in the index, but I didn't read it through. I try not to read things that depress me. "
John Updike
Myself
Me
Things
" I know more about what it's like to be elderly and infirm and kind of stupid, the way you get forgetful, but on the other hand I'm a littler, wiser, dare we say? The word 'wisdom' has kind of faded out of our vocabulary, but yeah, I'm a little wiser. "
John Updike
Say
Stupid
Kind
" My transition from wanting to be a cartoonist to wanting to be a writer may have come about through that friendly opposition, that even-handed pairing, of pictures and words. "
John Updike
Transition
Pictures
Words
" We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting. "
John Updike
Age
Interesting
Hero
" Belief, like love, must be voluntary. "
John Updike
Belief
Voluntary
Must
" I have never liked haircuts. "
John Updike
Liked
Haircuts
Never
" To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit. "
John Updike
Freedom
Happiness
Individual
" The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me. "
John Updike
Ink
Me
Miracle
" My actinic keratosis is a result of the triumphalism of the beach. The sun exacerbates it. "
John Updike
Beach
Result
Sun
" Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself. "
John Updike
Myself
Now
Enough
" In tennis, there is the forehand, the backhand, the overhead smash and the drop volley, all with a different grip. "
John Updike
Drop
Different
Overhead
" New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere. "
John Updike
Like
New
You
" A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience. "
John Updike
Year
Patience
Healthy
" All cartoonists are geniuses, but Arnold Roth is especially so. "
John Updike
Arnold
Roth
Geniuses