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" I seem to have this need to belong to some church. I get worried on Sunday mornings. "
John Updike
Some
Belong
Sunday
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" 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. "
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Paper
Book
Predict
" I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic-strip novel masterpiece. "
John Updike
See
Why
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" The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness. "
John Updike
Bricks
Architecture
Consciousness
" All cartoonists are geniuses, but Arnold Roth is especially so. "
John Updike
Arnold
Roth
Geniuses
" 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
" Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet. "
John Updike
God
War
Sky
" My wife and I had children when we were children ourselves. "
John Updike
Children
Ourselves
Were
" 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
" When I went away to college, I marveled at the wealth of bookstores around Harvard Square. "
John Updike
Away
Square
Wealth
" Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty. "
John Updike
Burdened
Duty
Sense
" 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
" 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
" The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary. "
John Updike
Met
Author
First
" We are most alive when we're in love. "
John Updike
Alive
Valentine's Day
Most
" If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself. "
John Updike
Know
Trying
Thought
" We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. "
John Updike
Take
Sane
Our
" 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
" Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. "
John Updike
Doing
Right
Better
" New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere. "
John Updike
Like
New
You
" I know more about what it's like to be elderly and infirm and kind of stupid, the way you get forgetful, but on the other hand I'm a littler, wiser, dare we say? The word 'wisdom' has kind of faded out of our vocabulary, but yeah, I'm a little wiser. "
John Updike
Say
Stupid
Kind
" Eros is everywhere. It is what binds. "
John Updike
Eros
Everywhere
Binds
" It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie. "
John Updike
Shot
Make
Hard
" 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
" Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. "
John Updike
Now
See
Why
" The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. "
John Updike
After
Breath
Adultery
" Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them. "
John Updike
Whatever
Been
Costs
" A seventeenth-century house tends to be short on frills like hallways and closets; you must improvise. "
John Updike
Must
House
Improvise
" To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. "
John Updike
Human
Dreams
Your Dreams
" My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it. "
John Updike
Hope
Last
Up
" 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