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" I'm a dull person. "
John Updike
Dull
Person
Related Quotes:
" American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism. "
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American
Behind
Work
" But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography. "
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Two
Through
Poet
" America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. "
John Updike
You
Happy
Make
" I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age. "
John Updike
Age
Writer
Sequels
" By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved. "
John Updike
Time
Partnership
Dissolved
" Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. "
John Updike
Writing
Sea
Criticism
" I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone. "
John Updike
Government
Alone
Leaves
" 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
" In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity. "
John Updike
Sympathy
Understanding
Light
" The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images. "
John Updike
Losing
Spiritual
Success
" Old age treats freelance writers pretty gently. "
John Updike
Old Age
Old
Age
" The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. "
John Updike
Inner
Good
Us
" Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. "
John Updike
Earth
Grace
Rain
" Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered. "
John Updike
Brainy
Delivered
Inspiration
" There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist. "
John Updike
Almost
Nothing
Worse
" 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. "
John Updike
Narrative
Clue
Going
" Some golfers, we are told, enjoy the landscape; but properly, the landscape shrivels and compresses into the grim, surrealistically vivid patch of grass directly under the golfer's eyes as he morosely walks toward where he thinks his ball might be. "
John Updike
Eyes
Enjoy
Ball
" My transition from wanting to be a cartoonist to wanting to be a writer may have come about through that friendly opposition, that even-handed pairing, of pictures and words. "
John Updike
Transition
Pictures
Words
" 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
" New York is, of course, many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left. "
John Updike
Return
Exile
He
" The theme of old age doesn't seem to fascinate Hollywood. "
John Updike
Hollywood
Theme
Age
" It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie. "
John Updike
Shot
Make
Hard
" Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man. "
John Updike
Privacy
Man
Manifest
" In any interview, you do say more or less than you mean. "
John Updike
Interview
Less
Mean
" Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner. "
John Updike
Learner
Teacher
Peasant
" 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
" In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap. "
John Updike
Sometimes
Speak
Speech
" I have never liked haircuts. "
John Updike
Liked
Haircuts
Never
" 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
" Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house. "
John Updike
Bring
Sometimes
Death