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
zero mean thinking
Think binary. When matter meets antimatter, both vanish, into pure energy. But both existed; I mean, there was a condition we'll call "existence." Think of one and minus one. Together they add up to zero, nothing, nada, niente, right? Picture them together, then picture them separating-peeling apart. ... Now you have something, you have two somethings, where once you had nothing.
education hands inspire
You cannot but learn more of the world's heft, as you take it now into your hands.
firsts adultery breathe
The first breathe of adultery is the freest.
revolution crowds just-one
Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another.
women race aliens
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. Mark Twain Women are an alien race set down among us.
mother different asking
In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not basically different, perhaps, from our own. For women, too, there seems to be that tangle of supplication and possessiveness, that descent toward infantile undifferentiation, that omnipotent helplessness, that merger with the cosmic mother-warmth, that flushed pulse-quickened leap into overestimation, projection, general mix-up.
love government leave-me-alone
I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.
golf together common-experience
Golf camaraderie, like that of astronauts and Antarctic explorers, is based on a common experience of transcendence; fat or thin, scratch or duffer, we have been somerwhere together where non-golfers never go.
sports moving golf
In no other sport must the spectator move.
death space great-things
The great thing about the dead, they make space.
mean eye space
It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter.
autumn grieving years
The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown.
writing merit artistic
The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.
input faces blind
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.