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
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.
empowered sit
When you sit at your desk, if you're lucky, there's a moment when you feel empowered to be someone or something else, to leap into another skin.
men women
What interests me is why men think of women as witches. It's because they're so fascinating and exasperating, so other.
There's something very reassuring... about the written record.
architecture mortar
The substance of fictional architecture is not bricks and mortar but evanescent consciousness.
afraid child
My reading as a child was lazy and cowardly, and it is yet. I was afraid of encountering, in a book, something I didn't want to know.
In becoming an icon, it is useful to die young.
age certain sequels suppose
I suppose sequels are inevitable for a writer of a certain age.
exciting poetry tend
I must say, when I reread myself, it's the poetry I tend to look at. It's the most exciting to write, and it's over the quickest.
encompass
Baseball skills schizophrenically encompass a pitcher's, a batter's and a fielder's.