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" 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
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" Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself. "
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" I feel old only when I look at my hands or at myself in the mirror. "
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Feel
Look
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" 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
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" We are drawn to artists who tell us that art is difficult to do and takes a spiritual effort, because we are still puritan enough to respect a strenuous spiritual effort. "
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Art
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Respect
" There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes. "
John Updike
Hearts
New
Pleasing
" Toni Morrison has a habit, perhaps traceable to the pernicious influence of William Faulkner, of plunging into the narrative before the reader has a clue to what is going on. "
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Narrative
Clue
Going
" 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. "
John Updike
Progress
Paper
Morning
" 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
" I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort. "
John Updike
Effort
Worth
Write
" I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year. "
John Updike
Book
Still
Year
" The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary. "
John Updike
Met
Author
First
" 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
" All love comes from the family. "
John Updike
Family
Love
" I like short stories. "
John Updike
Short
Like
Short Stories
" Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller. "
John Updike
Looking
World
Publishers
" In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering. "
John Updike
New York
New
Leaving
" Humor is my default mode. "
John Updike
Mode
Humor
Default
" Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading. "
John Updike
Government
Madness
Either
" It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules. "
John Updike
Where
Rules
Extremes
" A Christian novelist tries to describe the world as it is. "
John Updike
World
Tries
Describe
" Harvard has enough panegyrists without me. "
John Updike
Enough
Harvard
Me
" I must say, when I reread myself, it's the poetry I tend to look at. It's the most exciting to write, and it's over the quickest. "
John Updike
Myself
Write
Say
" In becoming an icon, it is useful to die young. "
John Updike
Icon
Young
Useful
" 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.' "
John Updike
Said
Now
Myself
" 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
" If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it. "
John Updike
Paper
Book
Predict
" By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved. "
John Updike
Time
Partnership
Dissolved
" Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilize their neighborhoods. "
John Updike
Lonely
Light
Sidewalk
" Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life. "
John Updike
Religion
Ignore
Us
" I find in my own writing that only fiction - and rarely, a poem - fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel. "
John Updike
Limits
Me
Writing