John Updike Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
-
Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.
-
The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
-
What people love about Santorum is he is who is he. He speaks his words. He loves God. He loves his country, and he loves gays.
-
Clearly, children's charities struggle to find private sources of money to sustain their benevolent programs.
-
Write every day; never give up; it's supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can't look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take.
-
Most of my books begin with a nap on my couch here, when I dream up characters and story lines, and then I write on my laptop in the recliner and handle the business side of email at my desk, which is sagging in the middle - maybe from so many words?
-
It's fairness to say those who work hard, get up in the morning, cut their cloth - in other words 'we can only afford to have one or two children because we don't earn enough'. They pay their taxes and they want to know that the same kind of decision-making is taking place for those on benefits.
-
Any quality player can adjust well to the different demands. It is like a good tennis player who is expected to adjust to the clay at the French Open, the grass at Wimbledon, the hard courts of the U.S. and the heat of the Australian Open. A professional is expected to do all that.
-
If the great Government of the United States were a private corporation no bank would take its name on a piece of paper, because it has cynically repudiated the words engraved upon its bonds.
-
I think Ellenor is embarrassed and ashamed and has devoted all of her energy to the law and to helping other people get justice because it's too difficult for her to face her own struggle for justice.
-
For a short time I was an assistant to a professional photographer, and I felt that my soul was not there. That is the stage when I decided to stay in London and do a graduate degree.
-
Tone matters more than words.
-
You need to understand that a skilled professional songwriter can accelerate your success as an already talented musician. These people are writing every single day, so their craft is really sharp, and it's the best songwriters who consistently get on the radio.
-
My dad would tell me bedtime stories, and he used to always leave them open-ended and finish at a crucial point with the words, 'dream on'. Then it was my responsibility to finish the story as I was drifting off to sleep. We would call them dreaming stories.
-
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
-
There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing.
-
When I do a workshop, there is always at least one author who comes up afterward and asks if I'll take a look at his or her book and consider blurbing it. For some reason, I can turn someone down in e-mail, but when he or she is looking me in the eye, I cave.
-
I like getting 'Times' articles online. But the actual paper just has too many words.
-
For science, the end of the evolution struggle is simply represented by 'survival.' As for the means to that end, apparently anything goes. Darwinism leaves humanity without a moral compass.
-
I was born in northeastern China, where we have the privilege to see forests just out of the window. And I thought, I am going to do something because I cannot imagine my hometown without forests, and I cannot imagine the earth turned into a desert. From that day on, environment protection weighs the same in my life as my professional acting career.
-
I have no regrets. I wanted to raise the kids and be a present father. When I developed a movie, I was gone for a year. That didn't really work for me. That isn't fair to make these life-forms and then disappear.
-
... I cannot think a civilization worth having that does not encourage and enable its subjects to spend something, not extorted by governments but freely given to keep wretchedness at least from the streets they walk through day by day.
-
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.
