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
deal escapist fact fantastic lives novel people time writer
The writer must face the fact that ordinary lives are what most people live most of the time, and that the novel as a narration of the fantastic and the adventurous is really an escapist plot; that aesthetically, the ordinary, the banal, is what you must deal with.
great people raised
I was raised in the Depression, when there was a great sense of dog-eat-dog and people fighting over scraps.
discovered distracted narrow novels people tastes
For many years, I read mystery novels for relaxation. But my tastes were too narrow - and, having read all of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, I discovered that the implausibility and the thinness of the people distracted me unduly from the plot.
anna brings causes celebrity emerges figure fully imaginary invented named people remain series sympathy whose
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.
people good-times feels
Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.
sea cities people
Cities aren't like people; they live on and on, even though their reason for being where they are has gone downriver and out to sea.
life people ems
The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up.
baby men people
I like old men. They can be wonderful bastards because they have nothing to lose. The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards.
mother people way
...but with his mother there's no question of liking him they're not even in a way separate people he began in her stomach and if she gave him life she can take it away and if he feels that withdrawal it will be the grave itself.
leadership men people
A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.
people want compromise
Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want.
sheep people mourning
People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.
new-york believe people
The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
fun people dumb
The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started.