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
truth men literature
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.
respect literature cost
Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.
wisdom time ideas
Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.
heart rocks literature
There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.
men goes-on young
There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.
said century 20th-century
Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
morning character fog
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.
time long figures
Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago.
time elements invaders
Time is our element, not a mistaken invader.
inspirational graduation hands
You cannot help but learn more as take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is and old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it.
dream regret moving
Dream golf is simply golf played on another course. We chip from glass tables onto moving stairways; we swing in a straightjacket, through masses of cobweb, and awaken not with any sense of unjust hazard but only with a regret that the round can never be completed, and that one of our phantasmal companions has kept the scorecard.
golf differences cups
The other sad truth about golf spectatorship is that for today's pros it all comes down to the putting, and that the difference between a putt that drops and one that rims the cup, though teleologically enormous, is intellectually negligeable.
debt might sacred
Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours.
blessing
All blessings are mixed blessings.