John Updike Quotes

'Driving is boring,' Rabbit pontificates, 'but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.'

John Updike

• Life
• Why
• American
• Driving

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Quotes to Explore

• My grandfather started a school for the underprivileged in Chandigarh, and that is why we moved from Himachal to Chandigarh. It was a small school, where even I would teach while in school.

  

  Yami Gautam
  • School
  • Why
  • Small

• When things happen - you ask yourself why today, why not tomorrow, why not yesterday? That's the most amazing thing about time.

  

  Ozwald Boateng
  • Time
  • Why
  • Today

• I know someone from growing up who is in jail right now for the rest of his life, but he was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.

  

  Mahershala Ali
  • People
  • Life
  • Up

• Instead of reading a paper, we now read the news online. Instead of buying books at a store, we buy them on-line. What's so revolutionary? The Internet has mainly affected our leisure life.

  

  Ha-Joon Chang
  • Life
  • Reading
  • Internet

• I've led a charmed life. I've known people who have been depressed, and I've never had that.

  

  Earl Hamner, Jr.
  • People
  • Life
  • Never

• I get to see life through rose-colored glasses a lot of the time.

  

  Usher
  • Life
  • Time
  • Rose

• Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

  

  Florenz Ziegfeld
  • Great
  • Money
  • Why

• Well, I have a sister that I'm very close with, and that relationship is probably the most intense relationship of my life to date, probably of my life, period.

  

  Zoe Kazan
  • Life
  • Relationship
  • Period

• Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves.

  

  E. Joseph Cossman
  • Life
  • Business
  • Leadership

• I've stood my ground in life, alone, even against overwhelming forces with the might and money to crush me.

  

  Tatum O'Neal
  • Life
  • Money
  • Alone

• By the '40s, Sam Goldwyn is a very serious man. By the '50s, he's the dean of American producers. To the end, he was Hollywood's gray eminence.

  

  A. Scott Berg
  • American
  • Man
  • Serious

• I probably prefer comedy. Why? I'm not sure. I feel like the energy of a comedy is a better fit for me. I try to be a happy guy! It seems that most of my life has the energy more for a comedy than for drama. I'm grateful to do both, but I would have to lean towards the comedy side of acting.

  

  Cameron Mathison
  • Life
  • Why
  • Happy

• There is nothing more important in life than love.

  

  Barbra Streisand
  • Life
  • Important
  • Love

• It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.

  

  Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • Life
  • True
  • Damn

• I have a social life. But I don't discuss it.

  

  Ed Koch
  • Life
  • Social
  • Social Life

• Why can't I just eat my waffle?

  

  Barack Obama
  • Why
  • Just
  • Eat

• I think it's important if you are an actor, if you are portraying human life, you have to connect with what is human. It's not easy if you spend a lot of time in L.A. and get sucked into the hedonism of the industry.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Life
  • Time
  • Important

• At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.

  

  E. M. Forster
  • Why
  • Side
  • Yes

• I'm a proud American - becoming a citizen in 1988 was one of the most profoundly moving occasions in my life; I'm a former Texan and a recent Californian.

  

  Abraham Verghese
  • Life
  • American
  • Proud

• The Tracy Morgan you see is the Tracy Morgan in real life. He's a great guy but... man, is he a nut.

  

  Kurt Fuller
  • Life
  • Great
  • Real

• It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of; for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer.

  

  Edwin Hubbell Chapin
  • Life
  • Think
  • Prayer

• Logic always seems to be telling us, in language quite unnecessarily technical, what we understood much better before it was explained.

  

  Arthur Balfour
  • Logic

• [To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

  

  Flannery O'Connor
  • Truth
  • Knowledge
  • Humility

• 'Driving is boring,' Rabbit pontificates, 'but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.'

  

  John Updike
  • Life
  • Why
  • American