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" I feel old only when I look at my hands or at myself in the mirror. "
John Updike
Feel
Look
Old
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" Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism. "
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Going
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Being
" Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them. "
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Whatever
Been
Costs
" Humor is my default mode. "
John Updike
Mode
Humor
Default
" My wife and I had children when we were children ourselves. "
John Updike
Children
Ourselves
Were
" 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
" 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
" 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
" My interest generally is the hidden Americans; the ones who live far away from the headlines. "
John Updike
Far Away
Away
Live
" Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. "
John Updike
Without
Come
Dreams
" We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting. "
John Updike
Age
Interesting
Hero
" My last vivid boyhood fright from books came when I was 15; I was visiting my uncle and aunt in Greenwich, and, emboldened by my success with 'The Waste Land,' I opened their copy of 'Ulysses.' The whiff of death off those remorseless, closely written pages overpowered me. So: back to soluble mysteries, and jokes that were not cosmic. "
John Updike
Success
Uncle
Death
" It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules. "
John Updike
Where
Rules
Extremes
" Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house. "
John Updike
Bring
Sometimes
Death
" I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic-strip novel masterpiece. "
John Updike
See
Why
Reason
" I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn't have the mentality. "
John Updike
Kid
Need
Science
" Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. "
John Updike
Eats
Face
Mask
" My first ambition was to be an animator for Walt Disney. Then I wanted to be a magazine cartoonist. "
John Updike
First
Wanted
Then
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Golf's ultimate moral instruction directs us to find within ourselves a pivotal center of enjoyment: relax into a rhythm that fits the hills and swales, and play the shot at hand - not the last one, or the next one, but the one at your feet, in the poison ivy, where you put it. "
John Updike
Play
Relax
Moral
" In art, anything goes, and if it goes, it goes. "
John Updike
Art
Anything
Goes
" A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience. "
John Updike
Year
Patience
Healthy
" New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere. "
John Updike
Like
New
You
" 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
" 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
" I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year. "
John Updike
Book
Still
Year
" All love comes from the family. "
John Updike
Family
Love
" The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all. "
John Updike
Excess
Us
Some
" The good ending dismisses us with a touch of ceremony and throws a backward light of significance over the story just read. It makes it, as they say, or unmakes it. A weak beginning is forgettable, but the end of a story bulks in the reader's mind like the giant foot in a foreshortened photograph. "
John Updike
Ending
Good
Light