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
almost animated family life movies needed pictures provide seemed
I was an only child. I needed an alternative to family life - to real life, you could almost say - and cartoons, pictures in a book, the animated movies, seemed to provide it.
central chimney massive recognized steep utter
A seventeenth-century house can be recognized by its steep roof, massive central chimney and utter porchlessness. Some of those houses have a second-story overhang, emphasizing their medieval look.
life
My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.
faith gloomy life witness
I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.
careless class editors ideal lap last malevolent meddling reviewers steer struggle words writers
Writers take words seriously-perhaps the last professional class that does-and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.
knows moved physical presence reader
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
boy cut forgotten shaving stare
Upon shaving off one's beard." The scissors cut the long-grown hair; the razor scrapes the remnant fuzz. Small-jawed, weak-chinned, bug-eyed, I stare at the forgotten boy I was.
eloquently
A lot of the Koran does not speak very eloquently to a Westerner. Much of it is either legalistic or opaquely poetic.
faith quality test wrong
There is this quality in things, of the Right was seeming Wrong at first. To test our faith
ink miracle print turning
The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.
sends
Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself.
worse
There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist.
Authors should be honored only for their works.
bad
I think you remember certain phrases from bad reviews. You don't remember all the bad reviews.