Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller. "
John Updike
Looking
World
Publishers
Related Quotes:
" If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. "
John Updike
Children
Eating
Men
" There's something very reassuring... about the written record. "
John Updike
About
Something
Very
" 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
" An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause. "
John Updike
Glory
Seek
World
" 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
" I must say, when I reread myself, it's the poetry I tend to look at. It's the most exciting to write, and it's over the quickest. "
John Updike
Myself
Write
Say
" There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes. "
John Updike
Hearts
New
Pleasing
" Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. "
John Updike
Without
Come
Dreams
" Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback. "
John Updike
Book
Average
Kiss
" 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
" That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds. "
John Updike
Nothing
Heaven
End
" There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist. "
John Updike
Almost
Nothing
Worse
" Baseball skills schizophrenically encompass a pitcher's, a batter's and a fielder's. "
John Updike
Pitcher
Baseball
Encompass
" Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever. "
John Updike
More
Difficult
Stories
" I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.' "
John Updike
Said
Now
Myself
" Does fiction, artistic writing, have much of a future? I must say it's on the way out. "
John Updike
Say
Future
Much
" 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
" Golf at its measured pace permits an electric excess of mental activity. "
John Updike
Golf
Excess
Activity
" 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
" Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself. "
John Updike
Remaining
Part
True
" Our artistic heroes tend to be those self-exercisers, like Picasso, and Nabokov, and Wallace Stevens, who rather defiantly kept playing past dark. "
John Updike
Past
Who
Playing
" 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
" Authors should be honored only for their works. "
John Updike
Honored
Only
Should
" 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
" 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
" Reagan has turned America into a tax haven. "
John Updike
America
Tax
Reagan
" New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere. "
John Updike
Like
New
You
" A seventeenth-century house can be recognized by its steep roof, massive central chimney and utter porchlessness. Some of those houses have a second-story overhang, emphasizing their medieval look. "
John Updike
Look
Houses
Chimney
" A room containing Philip Roth, I have noticed, begins hilariously to whirl and pulse with a mix of rebelliousness and constriction that I take to be Oedipal. "
John Updike
Room
Pulse
Noticed
" A number of American colleges are willing to pay a tempting amount to pinch and poke an author for a day or two. "
John Updike
Two
Day
Number