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" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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 picked up 'On Moral Fiction' in the bookstore and looked up myself in the index, but I didn't read it through. I try not to read things that depress me. "
John Updike
Myself
Me
Things
" From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. "
John Updike
Shame
Secrets
Infancy
" 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
" I have never liked haircuts. "
John Updike
Liked
Haircuts
Never
" Old age treats freelance writers pretty gently. "
John Updike
Old Age
Old
Age
" The writer must face the fact that ordinary lives are what most people live most of the time, and that the novel as a narration of the fantastic and the adventurous is really an escapist plot; that aesthetically, the ordinary, the banal, is what you must deal with. "
John Updike
Time
You
People
" The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on. "
John Updike
Star
Writer
Better
" A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. "
John Updike
Even
Person
Same
" An aging writer has the not insignificant satisfaction of a shelf of books behind him that, as they wait for their ideal readers to discover them, will outlast him for a while. "
John Updike
Wait
Aging
Satisfaction
" It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules. "
John Updike
Where
Rules
Extremes
" Writing makes you more human. "
John Updike
More
You
Human
" My actinic keratosis is a result of the triumphalism of the beach. The sun exacerbates it. "
John Updike
Beach
Result
Sun
" We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one. "
John Updike
After
Except
Survive
" 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
" Imagine writing a poem with a sweating, worried-looking boy handing you a different pencil at the end of every word. My golf, you may say, is no poem; nevertheless, I keep wanting it to be one. "
John Updike
End
Golf
Pencil
" Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. "
John Updike
Earth
Grace
Rain
" Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself. "
John Updike
Remaining
Part
True
" In becoming an icon, it is useful to die young. "
John Updike
Icon
Young
Useful
" 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
" 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
" Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. "
John Updike
Doing
Right
Better
" My attempt has been really to, beyond making a record of contemporary life, which is what you inevitably do, is trying to make beautiful books - books that are in some way beautiful, that are models of how to use the language, models of honest feeling, models of care. "
John Updike
Beautiful
Life
Language
" New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere. "
John Updike
Like
New
You
" Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house. "
John Updike
Bring
Sometimes
Death
" My first ambition was to be an animator for Walt Disney. Then I wanted to be a magazine cartoonist. "
John Updike
First
Wanted
Then
" I think books should have secrets, like people do. "
John Updike
Think
Books
Like
" The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion. "
John Updike
Inner
Good
Us
" My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing. "
John Updike
Sense
Life
Trash
" For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity. "
John Updike
Books
Us
Sense