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" Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house. "
John Updike
Bring
Sometimes
Death
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" 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
" The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific. "
John Updike
Like
Prolific
Tend
" I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles if I had to. "
John Updike
Labels
Write
Would
" Belief, like love, must be voluntary. "
John Updike
Belief
Voluntary
Must
" Harvard has enough panegyrists without me. "
John Updike
Enough
Harvard
Me
" 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
" For whatever crispness and animation my writing has I give some credit to the cartoonist manque. "
John Updike
Credit
Writing
Whatever
" Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. "
John Updike
Without
Come
Dreams
" Humor is my default mode. "
John Updike
Mode
Humor
Default
" Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. "
John Updike
Writing
Sea
Criticism
" New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere. "
John Updike
Like
New
You
" Eros is everywhere. It is what binds. "
John Updike
Eros
Everywhere
Binds
" Reagan has turned America into a tax haven. "
John Updike
America
Tax
Reagan
" All cartoonists are geniuses, but Arnold Roth is especially so. "
John Updike
Arnold
Roth
Geniuses
" I was an only child. I needed an alternative to family life - to real life, you could almost say - and cartoons, pictures in a book, the animated movies, seemed to provide it. "
John Updike
Life
Book
Movies
" The lust to meet authors ranks low, I think, on the roll of holy appetites; but it is an authentic pang. "
John Updike
Lust
Meet
Roll
" Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller. "
John Updike
Looking
World
Publishers
" 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
" I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year. "
John Updike
Book
Still
Year
" My father taught only math. "
John Updike
Father
Taught
Only
" We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one. "
John Updike
After
Except
Survive
" Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism. "
John Updike
Going
Barefoot
Being
" There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes. "
John Updike
Hearts
New
Pleasing
" 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
" 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
" 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
" There is a great deal of busywork to a writer's life, as to a professor's life, a great deal of work that matters only in that, if you don't do it, your desk becomes very full of papers. So, there is a lot of letter answering and a certain amount of speaking, though I try to keep that at a minimum. "
John Updike
You
Work
Try
" Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art. "
John Updike
People
Change
Facts
" 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
" Golf at its measured pace permits an electric excess of mental activity. "
John Updike
Golf
Excess
Activity