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
america experience lacks since thirteen
Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.
diminishes perception possession
Midas's Law: Possession diminishes perception of value, immediately
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.
criticism failure threatens
The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.
field impact instant second sine
In his field - where edge, zip and instant impact are sine qua non - Kidd is second to none.
agents literary seemed york
In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering.
almost asked photograph sell supposed work written
In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.
aware
I never really made a choice to live in America, so I should be aware of the social strata outside of the ones that I may live in.
human trying
I'm trying to get the terrorist out of the bugaboo category and into the category of a fellow human being.
art
In art, anything goes, and if it goes, it goes.
novelist
A Christian novelist tries to describe the world as it is.
activity becomes cares creative doer
Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better.
A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day.