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
ensures frame freedom guarantee happiness hopeful individual laws maximum minimal social
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
great people raised
I was raised in the Depression, when there was a great sense of dog-eat-dog and people fighting over scraps.
center fits hand hills last next ourselves pivotal poison rhythm shot ultimate within
Golf's ultimate moral instruction directs us to find within ourselves a pivotal center of enjoyment: relax into a rhythm that fits the hills and swales, and play the shot at hand - not the last one, or the next one, but the one at your feet, in the poison ivy, where you put it.
beauty christian cinema everywhere filled ideas life losing myths religion retreating spiritual success supports vacuum whereas
The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images.
mention takes thinks time
I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.'
cellar
Hobbies take place in the cellar and smell of airplane glue.
believe creation creative form homage human miracles mode seem twin value verse whether
I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.
intrinsic
For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity.
both cardboard changing heavy moved twice weight
As movers and the moved both know, books are heavy freight, the weight of refrigerators and sofas broken up into cardboard boxes. They make us think twice about changing addresses.
acts america beneath beyond darkness face freedom god madness paradise patient power rules wherever
America is beyond power; it acts as in a dream, as a face of God. Wherever America is, there is freedom, and wherever America is not, madness rules with chains, darkness strangles millions. Beneath her patient bombers, paradise is possible.
artistic kept playing rather tend wallace
Our artistic heroes tend to be those self-exercisers, like Picasso, and Nabokov, and Wallace Stevens, who rather defiantly kept playing past dark.
Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself.
family trying
I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession.
money seemed sold
I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'