John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updikewas an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 March 1932
CountryUnited States of America
life fall roller-coaster
Life is a roller coaster, you have your ups and downs unless you fall off.
football mother morning
The breezes taste Of apple peel. The air is full Of smells to feel- Ripe fruit, old footballs, Burning brush, New books, erasers, Chalk, and such. The bee, his hive, Well-honeyed hum, And Mother cuts Chrysanthemums. Like plates washed clean With suds, the days Are polished with A morning haze.
writing eggs chickens
Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.
water buckets
Money is like water in a leaky bucket: no sooner there, it begins to drip.
book thinking should-have
I think books should have secrets, like people do.
drinking beer thinking
An old essay by John Updike begins, 'We live in an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements.' That language is general and abstract, near the top of the ladder. It provokes our thinking, but what concrete evidence leads Updike to his conclusion ? The answer is in his second sentence : 'Consider the beer can.' To be even more specific, Updike was complaining that the invention of the pop-top ruined the aesthetic experience of drinking beer. 'Pop-top' and 'beer' are at the bottom of the ladder, 'aesthetic experience' at the top.
science mystery natural
Human was the music, natural was the static.
crush adversity use
Adversity in immunological doses has its uses; more than that crushes.
life water razors
Life is a razor, you are always in hot water or a scrape.
children tomatoes paper
The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please.
country writing care
In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.
art nature dare
Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.
reality guarantees-that self
The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.
betrayal sacrifice loss
There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.