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
wisdom father ideas
You know how it is with fathers, you never escape the idea that maybe after all they're right.
information juvenile
Yes, there is a ton of information on the Web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile.
rainbow trying christianity
Christianity isn't looking for a rainbow. If it were... we'd pass out opium at services. We're trying to serve God, not be God.
family way obligation
Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other's way, what a tangle.
new-york book cutting
Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
selfish light opposites
The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.
life people ems
The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up.
mother women world
The worst thing in the world is a bitter woman. That's one thing about your mother, she's never been bitter.
infancy-is secret spy
From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.
baby men people
I like old men. They can be wonderful bastards because they have nothing to lose. The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards.
government peculiar madness
Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.
home car literature
Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.
fighting witness smallness
Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
betrayal men love-is
All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.