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
doe fool april
Looking foolish does the spirit good.
art book home
I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples.
dwarves littles fame
Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.
self creative use
The creative writer uses his life as well as being its victim; he can control, in his work, the self-presentation that in actuality is at the mercy of a thousand accidents.
heart guidance guides
Do what the heart commands. The heart is our only guide.
moving heart history
The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.
bears finishing painting
I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.
heart fire burning
I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is - its irresistible charm - a fire.
book errors lasts
The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed.
atheist believe men
The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible, like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist.
ambiguity clash extremes
It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.
god lambs wells
God is in the tiger as well as in the lamb.
work trying panic
I will try not to panic, to keep my standard of living modest and to work steadily, even shyly, in the spirit of those medieval carvers who so fondly sculpted the undersides of choir seats.
men littles stories
It's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson - the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man.