Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity. "
John Updike
Books
Us
Sense
Related Quotes:
" I think you remember certain phrases from bad reviews. You don't remember all the bad reviews. "
John Updike
Bad
Remember
Reviews
" 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 don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life. "
John Updike
Life
Faith
My Life
" 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
" To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client. "
John Updike
Blind
Advocate
Ungrateful
" 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
" 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
" 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
" When I was born, my parents and my mother's parents planted a dogwood tree in the side yard of the large white house in which we lived throughout my boyhood. This tree I learned quite early, was exactly my age - was, in a sense, me. "
John Updike
Tree
Age
Early
" It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie. "
John Updike
Shot
Make
Hard
" The theme of old age doesn't seem to fascinate Hollywood. "
John Updike
Hollywood
Theme
Age
" When you sit at your desk, if you're lucky, there's a moment when you feel empowered to be someone or something else, to leap into another skin. "
John Updike
Lucky
Skin
Someone
" We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one. "
John Updike
After
Except
Survive
" Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. "
John Updike
Now
See
Why
" By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved. "
John Updike
Time
Partnership
Dissolved
" I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort. "
John Updike
Effort
Worth
Write
" Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. "
John Updike
Doing
Right
Better
" Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty. "
John Updike
Burdened
Duty
Sense
" I feel old only when I look at my hands or at myself in the mirror. "
John Updike
Feel
Look
Old
" 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. "
John Updike
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
" Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot. "
John Updike
Call
Beautiful
Almost
" Sex is like money; only too much is enough. "
John Updike
Sex
Only
Like
" I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles if I had to. "
John Updike
Labels
Write
Would
" The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. "
John Updike
After
Breath
Adultery
" The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific. "
John Updike
Like
Prolific
Tend
" Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house. "
John Updike
Bring
Sometimes
Death
" Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller. "
John Updike
Looking
World
Publishers
" 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. "
John Updike
Boring
Art
Deep
" Tiger Woods did not always win majors with ease; after his narrow victory in the 1999 PGA, he slumped and sighed as if he'd been carrying rocks uphill all afternoon. "
John Updike
Victory
Rocks
Win