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" A number of American colleges are willing to pay a tempting amount to pinch and poke an author for a day or two. "
John Updike
Two
Day
Number
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" 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. "
John Updike
Human
Dreams
Your Dreams
" Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides. "
John Updike
More
Lovely
Serious
" Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. "
John Updike
Earth
Grace
Rain
" Memories, impressions and emotions from the first 20 years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. "
John Updike
Emotions
Memories
Rich
" My actinic keratosis is a result of the triumphalism of the beach. The sun exacerbates it. "
John Updike
Beach
Result
Sun
" Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading. "
John Updike
Government
Madness
Either
" I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.' "
John Updike
You
Nobody
Better
" Gods don't answer letters. "
John Updike
Answer
Gods
Letters
" I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness. "
John Updike
Value
Believe
Writing
" Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art. "
John Updike
People
Change
Facts
" Does fiction, artistic writing, have much of a future? I must say it's on the way out. "
John Updike
Say
Future
Much
" 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
" We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. "
John Updike
Take
Sane
Our
" Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered. "
John Updike
Brainy
Delivered
Inspiration
" For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity. "
John Updike
Books
Us
Sense
" 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
" 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. "
John Updike
God
War
Sky
" Baseball skills schizophrenically encompass a pitcher's, a batter's and a fielder's. "
John Updike
Pitcher
Baseball
Encompass
" By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved. "
John Updike
Time
Partnership
Dissolved
" 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. "
John Updike
Host
Loved
Year
" There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't. "
John Updike
Man
Bring
Poem
" We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills. "
John Updike
Artist
Only
Skills
" The lust to meet authors ranks low, I think, on the roll of holy appetites; but it is an authentic pang. "
John Updike
Lust
Meet
Roll
" All love comes from the family. "
John Updike
Family
Love
" 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
" Writing makes you more human. "
John Updike
More
You
Human
" There should always be something gratuitous about art, just as there seems to be, according to the new-wave cosmologists, something gratuitous about the universe. "
John Updike
Art
Always
Universe
" I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age. "
John Updike
Age
Writer
Sequels
" Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works. "
John Updike
Said
Writer
20th Century
" Old age treats freelance writers pretty gently. "
John Updike
Old Age
Old
Age