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" I don't write about too many male businessmen, and I'm not apt to write about too many female businessmen. "
John Updike
Male
Female
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" 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
" Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went. "
John Updike
Driving
You
Life
" 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
" As movers and the moved both know, books are heavy freight, the weight of refrigerators and sofas broken up into cardboard boxes. They make us think twice about changing addresses. "
John Updike
Twice
Think
Broken
" 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
" A seventeenth-century house tends to be short on frills like hallways and closets; you must improvise. "
John Updike
Must
House
Improvise
" We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. "
John Updike
Take
Sane
Our
" Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner. "
John Updike
Learner
Teacher
Peasant
" Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. "
John Updike
Now
See
Why
" I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year. "
John Updike
Book
Still
Year
" Humor is my default mode. "
John Updike
Mode
Humor
Default
" 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
" 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
" Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. "
John Updike
Creative
Creativity
Doer
" Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. "
John Updike
Doing
Right
Better
" I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone. "
John Updike
Government
Alone
Leaves
" By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved. "
John Updike
Time
Partnership
Dissolved
" America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. "
John Updike
You
Happy
Make
" Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. "
John Updike
Eats
Face
Mask
" 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
" 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
" The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. "
John Updike
After
Breath
Adultery
" The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever. "
John Updike
Knows
Self
Own
" I feel old only when I look at my hands or at myself in the mirror. "
John Updike
Feel
Look
Old
" Thinking it over, I can't locate another artist in the Updike family. "
John Updike
Family
Over
Thinking
" Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me; and when the subject is myself, I want to jeer and weep. "
John Updike
Me
Everything
Because
" I don't think women are dumb. "
John Updike
Women
Dumb
Think
" A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. "
John Updike
Even
Person
Same
" My wife and I had children when we were children ourselves. "
John Updike
Children
Ourselves
Were
" Authors should be honored only for their works. "
John Updike
Honored
Only
Should