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
children men ice-cream
If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.
flower giving natural
Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.
rain would-be
Without rain, there would be no life.
change art reflection
Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.
eye golf fog
I assume my stance, and take back the club, low, slowly; at the top, my eyes fog over, and my joints dip and swirl like barn swallows, I swing. There is a fruitless commotion of dust and rubber at my feet. "Smothered it," I say promptly. After enough lessons the terminology becomes second nature.
educational information stuff
I imagine most of that stuff on the information highway is roadkill anyway.
firsts adultery constraints
The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
atheist humanity intellectual
Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic un-interestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?
adventure knows
You always find things you didn't know you were going to say, and that is the adventure...
progress needs
What we need is progress with an escape hatch.
basketball matter firsts
I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.
happiness children educational
And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.
sex glowing body
For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do, they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.
thinking curiosity trying
Not judginess, but openness and curiosity are our proper business. I'm still trying to educate myself. I don't think you need to keep rehearsing your instincts. Far better to seek out models of what you can't do.