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" The first author I met socially was Joyce Cary. "
John Updike
Met
Author
First
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" 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
" In a city like New York, you're aware of the rich and poor. "
John Updike
Poor
City
You
" Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself. "
John Updike
Myself
Now
Enough
" What interests me is why men think of women as witches. It's because they're so fascinating and exasperating, so other. "
John Updike
Men
Me
Women
" 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
" 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
" Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. "
John Updike
Earth
Grace
Rain
" We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. "
John Updike
Take
Sane
Our
" Billy Collins writes lovely poems. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides. "
John Updike
More
Lovely
Serious
" We are most alive when we're in love. "
John Updike
Alive
Valentine's Day
Most
" Nature refuses to rest. "
John Updike
Rest
Nature
Refuses
" 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
" Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them. "
John Updike
Whatever
Been
Costs
" There should always be something gratuitous about art, just as there seems to be, according to the new-wave cosmologists, something gratuitous about the universe. "
John Updike
Art
Always
Universe
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever. "
John Updike
Knows
Self
Own
" For many years, I read mystery novels for relaxation. But my tastes were too narrow - and, having read all of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, I discovered that the implausibility and the thinness of the people distracted me unduly from the plot. "
John Updike
Plot
Having
Me
" Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller. "
John Updike
Looking
World
Publishers
" 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
" For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity. "
John Updike
Books
Us
Sense
" The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it. "
John Updike
Support
Encouragement
Society
" 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
" 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
" To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client. "
John Updike
Blind
Advocate
Ungrateful
" Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. "
John Updike
Writing
Sea
Criticism
" Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house. "
John Updike
Bring
Sometimes
Death
" Somehow, it is hard to dislike a man once you have played a round of golf with him. "
John Updike
Hard
Dislike
Man
" 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