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" 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
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" A house, having been willfully purchased and furnished, tells us more than a body, and its description is a foremost resource of the art of fiction. "
John Updike
Resource
More
House
" 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. "
John Updike
Nothing
Heaven
End
" Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty. "
John Updike
Burdened
Duty
Sense
" I love Shillington not as one loves Capri or New York, because they are special, but as one loves one's own body and consciousness, because they are synonymous with being. "
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New
Body
Love
" My first ambition was to be an animator for Walt Disney. Then I wanted to be a magazine cartoonist. "
John Updike
First
Wanted
Then
" Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. "
John Updike
Religion
Ignore
Us
" There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist. "
John Updike
Almost
Nothing
Worse
" All cartoonists are geniuses, but Arnold Roth is especially so. "
John Updike
Arnold
Roth
Geniuses
" 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
" Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback. "
John Updike
Book
Average
Kiss
" The rich - they just live in another realm, really. "
John Updike
Live
Really
Just
" Some golfers, we are told, enjoy the landscape; but properly, the landscape shrivels and compresses into the grim, surrealistically vivid patch of grass directly under the golfer's eyes as he morosely walks toward where he thinks his ball might be. "
John Updike
Eyes
Enjoy
Ball
" All love comes from the family. "
John Updike
Family
Love
" When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. "
John Updike
Aim
New
Mind
" I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age. "
John Updike
Age
Writer
Sequels
" The firmest house in my fiction, probably, is the little thick-walled sandstone farmhouse of 'The Centaur' and 'Of the Farm'; I had lived in that house, and can visualize every floorboard and bit of worn molding. "
John Updike
Visualize
Farm
House
" Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. "
John Updike
Now
See
Why
" An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause. "
John Updike
Glory
Seek
World
" A seventeenth-century house can be recognized by its steep roof, massive central chimney and utter porchlessness. Some of those houses have a second-story overhang, emphasizing their medieval look. "
John Updike
Look
Houses
Chimney
" The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it. "
John Updike
Support
Encouragement
Society
" The dwelling places of Europe have an air of inheritance, or cumulative possession - a hive occupied by generations of bees. "
John Updike
Bees
Places
Inheritance
" Books externalise our brains and turn our homes into thinking bodies. "
John Updike
Brains
Books
Turn
" Hobbies take place in the cellar and smell of airplane glue. "
John Updike
Place
Hobbies
Airplane
" There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes. "
John Updike
Hearts
New
Pleasing
" I think books should have secrets, like people do. "
John Updike
Think
Books
Like
" For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do, they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities. "
John Updike
Other
Alike
Must
" If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. "
John Updike
Children
Eating
Men
" 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
" I never really made a choice to live in America, so I should be aware of the social strata outside of the ones that I may live in. "
John Updike
America
Choice
Live
" Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilize their neighborhoods. "
John Updike
Lonely
Light
Sidewalk